I wrote these chapters before hand that’s why it seems I’m just shooting them out left and right rapidly. I even wrote a story before this but the setting was WoM but this is a remaster for that. Anyways, Chapter Three
“Magnus, Acelina. I have received some news regarding Dawn Island from our scouts there.” Zachary said on a podium. “There are rumors of there being a Dark WIzard trafficking ring. Various people from around the War Seas are coming together to meet up in a secret spot on or near Dawn Island, to bid captive dark wizards to them. I hear they’re being sold out to act as slaves for them…”
“That’s awful… why is nothing being done about this?!” Magnus asked.
“Yeah Why the heck’s the Grand Navy not doing anything about this?” Acelina added on.
“I honestly doubt they could. Even if it is real, there’s no evidence for them to go off of for this. And besides, would you want the Grand Navy to bust it? And take the dark wizards captive?”
“Touché.” Acelina said before cracking her knuckles. “So, you want us to go over there and confirm the existence of this dark wizard trafficking ring, and if it’s real, beat the hell out of everyone there and rescue the wizards.”
“That is the basic gist of this mission. I’m sending you two out specifically for a reason.” Zachary turned to Acelina. “Acelina. Your past as a dark wizard yourself gives you more experience dealing with criminals. You know how they think, better than most here in fact.”
“You ain’t wrong there Guild Master.” Acelina said, though a little unsatisfied to hear that.
Zachary then turned to Magnus. “Magnus, I selected you to tag along with Acelina because I know that you two get along well. If something were to happen, I trust you two would have each others’ backs, correct?”
“Yes sir!” Magnus and Acelina said together.
“Very well. Set out for Dawn Island in the next few hours. Take this time to prepare how you will.” Zachary closed off. Acelina and Magnus began to walk out of the main hall. Once they got to the door, they saw Luna and Lucien approach.
“Oh, hey guys.” Magnus said.
“Hello Magnus.” Lucien responded, completely ignoring Acelina.
Acelina looked on at Lucien, before getting in front of Magnus. “Don’t I get a hello too? How long are you gonna give me the silent treatment, I already gave you back the sunken sword.”
“He’s still mad that you stole it and made him think Jared did.” Luna butted in. “After all, your deception caused him to try and fight Jared, and that got him in trouble with the Guild Master.”
“That was weeks ago though! And I said I was sorry!”
“Did you?”
Magnus turned to Acelina. “Yeah, did you?”
Acelina stood there, trying to remember her giving an actual apology for it. “… I’m sorry for taking it.” Magnus sighed. Lucien began to walk inside the main hall.
“Well, we can’t get sidetracked. The Guild Master said he had a mission for us. I will see you later.” Luna said as she followed Lucien. Magnus waved at them as they left, then turned to Acelina. “You need to get better with dealing with people you know.”
Meanwhile, Ray and Jared met up with Erik inside his room. Erik sat down on his bed, Jared found a seat next to the window, and Ray preferred to lean on a wall.
“Alright, now that you’re here, we can begin to talk about our plans.” Erik said. “If we’re going to take Gallan down, we need to first analyze what he can do.”
“I’ll begin with what we know from our encounter, then you can add on with information you know.” Ray said.
“By all means.”
“Alright. For starters, that guy is extremely powerful, in terms of physical prowess and magical abilities.” Ray closed his eyes, remembering the day the clan met Gallan. “He’s really fast, being able to get a jump on me with those binds. He was even able to get the jump on the Guild Master himself. And then there’s that left arm of his… I don’t know what it’s about, but he smashed my old cutlass to bits with it…”
“And that’s not all. He’s way too tough to be human.” Jared added on. “He pretty much just walked through my Ember Blaster. And when 5 of us attacked him head on with blast spells, he was more or less unfazed by it. And then he fired a fire spell of his own that took out all of them…” Jared then took a bite out of his bagel.
Erik turned to him. “Why do you have a bagel…?”
“Cause I was hungry?”
“Whatever. Just get back to what you were saying.”
“Right, anyways…” Jared bit into the bagel once more, then continued to speak. “… he was way too strong to have been a regular person. And the craziest thing is, he had two types of magic. Fire and water. He was able to use a water beam and push back the Guild Master’s Twin Blasts…”
“As we are now, if we were to fight Gallan we’d stand zero chance…” Ray said, disheartened by his own words.
“Yeah… the only person I heard who was this strong was the king of that Summer Hold back in Magius…” Jared put his finger in the hole of the bagel and began spinning it around on his finger. “Dave Silva, right?”
“David Silver.” Erik corrected Jared. “But you should know that he’s even stronger than the king.”
Jared and Rays’ eyes widened. “Are you for real?!” They shouted in unison.
“The way he is right now? Yes. If they fought, Gallan would win.”
Jared leaned back on the chair. “How do we beat this guy…” Jared groaned as he continued to slouch.
“However, you should know that his power isn’t 100% natural…”
“What do you mean exactly…?”
Erik got up. “You know about amulets right?”
“Those things that go around your necks that make you stronger? Yeah, we all have them.” Jared showed off the three amulets on him. Two orange amulets, and a gray one. “Got two power amulets and a defense one. Ray’s got two defense and a power. I’m pretty sure Ace has some magic size-”
“All I needed was a yes.” Erik raised his hand up at Jared, gesturing him to stop rambling on. “Well, you also know there are tiers to how strong of an effect the amulets have, yes?”
“There are poor amulets, dull amlutes, minor ones, major ones, and so forth. Almost everyone here uses dulls and poors, some use minors.” Ray said.
“Right. And you also know that you can’t have too many amulets or you run the risk of losing control of your magic, or using a powerful amulet that you can’t handle might harm your ability to use magic, right?”
“Yeah, but what’s this gotta do with Gallan?” Jared was halfway done with his bagel at this point.
“Well, if we’re basing this off of regular power, I’d say that the most Gallan would be able to use is a great tier amulet. That’s still stronger than the members here and the guild master though, right?”
“Yeah… I think there’s a ‘but’ coming…” Jared said.
“… but, he’s managed to gain more power through stronger amulets. I’m not too sure on the details, but apparently while on a voyage to find more treasure, he stumbled upon a chest full of major tier amulets-”
“There’s no way he was that lucky!” Jared shouted. “I can’t get a single sunken sword on my own but the guy just strikes the jackpot like that?!”
“Why do you want a sunken sword so bad anyway? Don’t you use fire magic?” Ray asked.
“Yeah but it’s still a really strong sword from what I’ve seen and I’d still like to use it. Besides, I might end up using lightning magic in the future so it’d be handy. You never know.”
“How many times are we gonna get off track here dammit?!” Erik shouted.
“Sorry about that.” Jared sat back down. “You can go on.”
“Thank you.” Erik cleared his throat, this continued. “At the level he was at, it was a stupid idea to try and use them. Which is why he decided to find a special alchemist who could help him out with it…”
“Special alchemist?” Ray asked.
“I’ve met with her a couple of times over the years whenever Gallan called for me to find materials for stuff. Her name is Rebecca Water. She’s a genius as far as alchemists go. She’s not only able to perfectly control the enhancement for whatever item you want to give you the ideal result, but she can completely restructure its power.”
“That’s insane… you mean to tell me Gallan has someone like that in his corner?!” Jared asked.
Erik nodded. “When Gallan brought her the amulets, he forced her to do something to them so that he could harness their power with little to no repercussions. At first she wasn’t sure if she could do it, but through some…” Erik looked downward, pausing for a moment. “… persuading…” Jared raised an eyebrow when he said “persuading” the way he did. “… She began a 4 month long process of trying to figure out how to make these amulets work for Gallan, until, she figured out how to do it.” Erik raised his hands. “She sort of… ‘reset’ their effects so that they’d be about as strong as a dull amulet, then broke them into tiny bits, and covered Gallan in them, like beads on a string. They’re wrapped around parts of his body, but I don’t know too much about where. And apparently, when Rebecca reset them, she made it so that they would climb back to their original power gradually. That way, his body would slowly get accustomed to their powerful effects…”
“So, in layman’s terms, he has a genius alchemist structuring amulets to learn alongside him?” Ray asked.
“I guess you could say that.”
Jared took the last bite of his bagel, and spoke. “That’s a great story and all, but what do we do with this information exactly? Are we gonna search his body for beads then rip them off?”
“That was my first thought when I learned about this information too.” Erik replied. “But they wouldn’t come off just by pulling hard or cutting them off. The material they were made with is too durable to be removed by force. The best course of action would be to disable all of their effects, and even then he’s still a powerful foe.”
“Well, now we know how to deal with him.” Ray said, getting off of the wall.
“Uh… how do we deal with him?” Jared asked, confused.
“By figuring out a way to disable the effects of those powerful amulets.”
“Yeah… how?”
“We’ll figure that out along the way…” Ray walked to the door. “For now, this was a good talk. We’ve got a good idea on what we need to do. Thanks Erik.” Erik’s face showed he wanted to say something there, but he couldn’t find the words. Jared looked on at that. Ray opened the door, and down the hall he saw Nick walking down. Ray’s eyes widened as he quickly walked into the room again, closing the door.
“Ray, what’s up?” Jared asked, getting up.
“Nick’s down the hall, I don’t know if he saw me here.”
“Who’s Nick again?”
“Another fire wizard in this clan, but that isn’t important. Why are you avoiding him?”
“Because, if he sees me here, he might see you here Jared!” Ray said, getting quieter. “And if he sees us he’ll want to know why we’re here. And if he tells him the truth, he’ll tell the Guild Master the truth, and we’ll be in trouble from there!”
“Ohhhh… crap.” The realization hit Jared, and Erik was a little worrisome. “How do you know Nick’ll tell him?”
“It’s Nick. He was a part of the old Valcrest with the Guild Master. He’s closer with him than any of us. He’ll definitely talk.”
“He’s right. We’ll need to keep quiet here, to avoid our plans getting back to the Guild Master.” Erik said. They could hear footsteps coming to the door.
“But what do we say if and when Nick gets here?” Jared whispered.
Ray was scrambling for ideas. “I don’t know, just thinking of something.”
Step. Step.
“What if we just hide?”
“Hide where exactly?”
Step. Step.
“Under the bed maybe?”
“We can’t fit under there!”
“Then, then-”
Step. Step. Step. The door to the room opened.
“Uh, Erik? Is Ra- Oh hey Ray.” Nick said. “Oh, Jared too. What’re you guys doing here? Erik didn’t seem to be the type to open up to people this soon.”
The three of them looked at Nick, their minds racing to come up with a good excuse to get themselves out of this predicament. Anything, anything could work. But they couldn’t think of anything. Any other moment than now they could’ve thought of tons of things, but now, it’s as if they were running through a thick fog, unable to find anything that could help them. Just then.
“We were talking about how Erik was a vegan!” Jared blurted out. Erik turned to him, eyes widening.
“Oh, he is?”
“Yep! I never really got it, but he really just doesn’t like eating meat it seems.” Jared put his arm around Ray’s shoulder. “Me and Ray didn’t really get it so we’re picking his brain about it.”
“Y-yeah. We are.” Ray said, collecting himself.
Nick turned to Erik. “Well, you guys shouldn’t pry about a person’s personal decisions like that. If Erik’s a vegan, let him be a vegan.”
“You know what Nick?” Ray said, throwing Jared’s arm off of him. “You’re right. Which is why I’m gonna leave now. Come on Jared. Let’s go.” Ray walked out of the room rather quickly, Jared following. A little confused by their behavior, Nick closed the door and left Erik to himself in the room, to now ponder what to do with the situation against Gallan, and another thought which rang in his head like an alarm.
“That bastard’s gonna pay if he’s gonna make me give up ham…”
Some time had passed, and Acelina and Magnus were on a boat, setting sail for Dawn Island.
“Alright Mag, once we get to Dawn Island, what’ll be the plan.”
“Mag…?” Magnus thought. “Well I was thinking we’ll spend some time on Dawn Island. I brought equipment for us to set up camp. We should also hit up the scouts on that island, Lex and Oskar, to see what info they have. You could probably look around to see if there’s anyone from the underground-”
“The underground…?” Acelina said, her cheerful tone slowly fading.
“Well, isn’t that why the Guild Master picked you?”
“Yeah, it is…” Acelina turned to the sea, looking at the birds flying, diving in, and picking up fish.
“… something you wanna talk about?”
“… I just wish that… I wasn’t known as just the reformed criminal, I guess…”
“Aren’t most of us sort of reformed criminals?”
“It’s different, and you know it. I was actually part of a gang. Until I, you know… met you guys.”
“Oh yeah, I remember that day like it was yesterday. I was taking a trip to an island to gather materials so we could try to forge our own weapons. I don’t remember which one, but you were there. You tried to fight me. Who won that fight again?”
“Me.” Acelina turned over to Magnus.
“Ehh I don’t think so.” Magnus smirked a bit. Acelina chuckled a little, then turned back to the ocean.
“But I’m still reminded of my past… my bloody past. And I guess it just, bothers me?”
“You know, I never pictured you for the ‘Pouring out my feelings’ type. But just know, even if your past was all bloody, I don’t care about it!” Magnus said with a cheerful smile. “You’re my friend through and through!”
“Thanks Mag.” Acelina smiled a little. The thoughts plagued her mind, but she was given a little bit of comfort with those words. “Don’t tell the others about this, ok?”
“Sure. Anyways, how far are we?”
“I dunno. We should be getting there soon, it shouldn’t be that far… right?”
Acelina looked on at the sea. She should see something in the distance. She got to the edge of the ship, trying to get a better look at it. Soon, she was able to get a good look at it. Her eyes widened.
“Hey, Mag?”
“Yeah Ace?”
Acelina grew a wicked smile. “We got us some company.” She pointed forward, towards a pirate ship getting nearer to them.
Magnus sighed. “Do we really gotta fight? Would’ve been nice if we could’ve just got to Dawn Island without a fuss.”
“Screw that! A good ol’ fight’s just what I needed after all of this!” Acelina cracked her knuckles. “Let’s charge ‘em!”
“Alright, let’s do this.” Magnus got up, preparing for a fight.