Chapter 634: Magic and Research

Benjamin kept his own presence small and his eyes moving, noting exits and corners the way someone might note the location of deep water while walking along a narrow bridge.

They followed the main lane downward until the sound of raised voices and the clink of pottery reached them.

Ahead stood a particular tavern, the loudest place they had encountered since entering the gloomy stretch of the city.

Laughter rolled out in short bursts, mixed with the deeper rumble of conversation and the occasional sharp call for more drink.

Compared to the muted streets around it, the tavern felt aggressively alive; a pocket of noise and warmth in a place that had learned to be quiet.

Erica stopped a short distance from the entrance and turned to face Benjamin.

She straightened her shoulders, steeling herself the way a person might before stepping into cold water. Her chin lifted. Her hands settled at her sides.

"Benjamin, please stay here and wait for me." Her gender-neutral voice was steady and practical. "I will go inside to ask some questions. I will not spend much time — just enough to learn what can be learned without raising suspicion — so you will not be left alone for long. Just... do not talk to anyone who looks suspicious. Stay near the wall if you can, and keep your answers short if anyone does approach you."

[I think Erica is forgetting more than my gender] Benjamin thought, [but my age as well.]

He opened his mouth to argue, and the protest came out in a low, nagging stream.

Erica listened with patience, but after a short back-and-forth, Benjamin relented with a short, reluctant nod.

In the end, they settled on a simple division. She would go inside and ask the questions that needed asking among the drinkers and the staff.

He would remain outside and speak to the people who lingered near the door or passed along the street.

Between them, they would try to learn the whereabouts of the rat.

They were careful about the shape of the questions.

Too much curiosity would only attract the wrong kind of attention, so they kept the inquiries narrow and practical: had anyone noticed individuals who spent a great deal of time on experiments, people who were far too secretive about their work, people who used strange magic in ways that did not match the commonly known patterns.

The problem, of course, was that many people in Lot fit those descriptions. Secrecy and unusual practices were common currency here.

Still, it was the only useful net they could cast without announcing their true purpose to every listening ear.

Erica had stepped through the tavern doorway, and Benjamin had taken up a position against the wall a short distance away.

Close enough to keep the entrance in view. Far enough that he did not look as though he were waiting for someone in particular. The wall was rough against his back, the stone cool through his tunic.

The time stretched as he watched the street. He answered a few casual questions from passers-by with short, forgettable replies, and he kept his face neutral and his posture relaxed.

Occasionally he leaned just far enough to glance through the open doorway. Nearly an hour passed before he saw her again.

Erica was seated at a long table near the middle of the room, a mug of ale in front of her, surrounded by a small group of cheerful older men whose laughter rolled out in easy waves.

She looked relaxed and at home among them, her head tilted as she listened to something one of them was saying.

Benjamin chose to believe she had not lost sight of their objectives.

The conversation, whatever its surface appearance, was (probably) still aimed at the information they needed.

He moved away from the tavern after that, walking a short distance along the street so that he could speak to other people without remaining in the same place too long.

He was still cautious of the rat, so reading minds or reaching for any of his abilities that might leave a noticeable trace felt unwise.

The barrier they had stepped through earlier was proof enough that competent eyes and ears existed here. Yet the ordinary questions produced almost nothing useful.

People answered in vague circles, or they even changed the subject.

They claimed they knew nothing of the kind of individuals he described, but the deliberate withholding of information was obvious.

To them, he was a clearly suspicious alien asking the wrong sort of questions; someone who might as well have been wearing a sign that read "outsider looking for trouble."

After the twelfth empty exchange, Benjamin stopped on a quieter stretch of lane and made a decision.

Spreading his senses across the entire district was a risk, but the alternative was to spend hours walking street by street with nothing to show for it.

He was also, if he was honest with himself, a bit too lazy to search the whole of Lot by ordinary means when a faster method existed.

He closed his eyes for half a breath, then opened them again and let the ability unfold.

The spread of his senses moved outward in a single, rapid pulse, covering the district within seconds, and then retracted just as quickly, pulling back before any magically sensitive person could lock onto the source.

Someone like Yuki might feel nothing more than a quick, unexplained prick of awareness—a sensation too brief and directionless to follow.

That was the best he could manage under the circumstances.

The information that returned was sharp but limited, exactly as he had expected.

He received only vague impressions: the overall location of particularly suspicious individuals, faint bits of their magical signatures, nothing detailed enough to identify a face or a name.

If the rat was among them, he might still walk past without realizing it. The gamble remained a gamble, but the results were clear enough to justify the risk.

As far as Benjamin was concerned, "the rat" might not be a single individual.

From Benjamin’s new data, there were numerous suspicious people scattered throughout Lot.

Individuals were engaged in dangerous and forbidden experiments of many kinds.

And the presence of the barrier now made immediate sense to him; something this dense with hidden work would naturally want to keep outside eyes from looking too closely.

Among the impressions were traces of human and demi-human experiments—work that involved living subjects rather than simple materials.

And deeper still, layered through several of the signatures, were attempts to handle chaos energy—quintessence—itself.

Benjamin had a private name for that particular force.

He called it "the Big Bang": a coalition of more than one element of nature, forced together until they formed the original chaotic energy that had once played a great role in the creation of Elyndor.