It had been weeks since Deimos last visited. Initially, Archibald had welcomed the break from the constant torture and interrogation, though he was starting to worry that this might be a bad omen.

  Why had Hermes’s son given up on him all of a sudden?

  The best-case scenario was that the man had simply grown tired of their pointless talks, finally accepting that Archibald wasn’t going to share any useful information about his grandson. However, there was also a more chilling possibility that Percy had been captured – or worse, killed – and that Deimos just hadn’t cared enough to inform him.

  ‘No sense in stressing over it. It’s not like there’s anything I can do…’

  He sighed, leaning back against the cold wall. His cuts and burns no longer stung, having scabbed a while ago. Not that they’d bothered him much even when they’d still been fresh, but they had made sleeping harder – which sucked even more since it was the best way to alleviate his boredom.

  All things considered, Archibald hadn’t minded his imprisonment too much – at least not from an individual perspective. In some ways, his time in the dark cell could be considered his first vacation in centuries. He had no work or responsibilities here – he could just sit all day, contemplating the great mysteries of the universe, with nobody to bother him but the guards occasionally bringing him food and water.

  It obviously wasn’t perfect, of course. The stench and the darkness irritated him, though he’d slowly grown used to that over time. Not having access to elixirs wasn’t ideal either, but it was silly to worry about delaying his next advancement by a couple of years when he didn’t even know if he’d survive this place.

  By far the worst part of his imprisonment was that he didn’t know how his family was doing. At the beginning, Deimos had allowed them to see him every now and then, though the visits had grown scarcer as time went on, Hermes’s son probably punishing him as his patience waned. Thankfully, Archibald was confident that he had left his House in good hands. Even if Percy got captured, Galahad and Elaine should be powerful enough to hold the fort.

  With nothing else to do, Archibald was about to try and fall asleep again, when something suddenly changed.

  A tremor spread through the dungeon, howling winds somehow flooding the dark corridor. They were accompanied by shrill cries and cawing birds – eerie sounds that were arguably out of place in the world of the living, let alone the underground prison.

  The noise appeared to have a strange rhythm to it, tying the disparate sounds together into a ghostly symphony. It grew louder as the tremor intensified, the bars in Archibald’s cell shaking as a powerful domain spilled through their gaps, brushing over every surface in the room.

  The potent willpower clearly belonged to a Violet – no Blue should be capable of something like this – yet Archibald struggled to recognize its owner. He was certain that he’d never felt this domain before, though a strange sense of familiarity crept into his mind.

  The willpower wrapped tightly around his body, its cold touch sending a shiver down his spine. It was generally frowned upon for one to intrude into another’s personal space like this, yet Archibald didn’t feel any hostility from the newcomer.

  ‘Just who…?’

  He failed to think of any friendly Violet who would risk going up against the Great Houses to see him. Was it a Blue who’d recently advanced, then? He struggled to think of one of those too… At the very least, he doubted that it was anyone from their family.

  Was it a neutral party perhaps? Deimos’s replacement? Or somebody who had obtained permission to visit him for some entirely unrelated reason?

  Whoever it was, the domain weakened momentarily as it examined Archibald’s body, its owner seemingly shuddering in surprise. Archibald didn’t know whether it was his numerous scars that had shocked the intruder, or whether they had been searching for a different prisoner altogether.

  Either way, they clearly decided not to leave him trapped here.

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  They retracted their domain slightly, focusing it on Archibald’s binds. He couldn’t see the willpower, but he felt the enchanted metal on his wrists and ankles crack, the mysterious Violet taking extra care to shatter the shackles without injuring him in the process.

  Archibald’s benefactor was far less cautious about the cell, however. The bars groaned in protest as the door was torn off its hinges, screws and bolts popping off the ground and ceiling one by one. Finally, all the metal got violently twisted into a ball tall enough to reach a man’s chest, before getting tossed carelessly aside, shattering the ground with a heavy thud.

  Only now did Archibald register two series of footsteps drawing nearer.

  Not wanting to risk offending the visitors before he knew what he was dealing with, he opted to scan them with his Mana Sense instead of his own willpower. The strongest one was at Violet, causing Archibald to assume that he was the owner of the mysterious domain.

  What was the alternative? The other person clearly sported a much lower grade.

  Examining the second person further, Archibald’s lips couldn’t help but curl into a relieved smile upon noticing the second Yellow core in his abdomen, and the two-cored creature standing on his shoulder. There weren’t that many people on Remior who fit that description.

  The newcomers stopped right outside the devastated cell.

  He recognized the first as Eleazar – the friendliest among the Guild’s elders, and someone who had visited him a couple of times before. Archibald was starting to doubt that the strange domain had come from the old alchemist, however.

  His grandson was dressed in enchanted clothes – a set of grey robes covering him from head to toe, the fabric brimming with dense, Yellow mana. His eyes shone like the last time he had seen him, though they now did so in a less conspicuous colour.

  Archibald raised an eyebrow, feeling like he was looking into a mirror. Percy had always resembled him more than his other grandchildren, though his shaved scalp and the young man’s youthful features had differentiated them.

  That was all in the past, however. In a strange quirk of fate, grandfather and grandson had both grown their hair out since their last meeting, albeit for different reasons. The decades that Percy had no doubt experienced inside Kronos’s Decree had clearly left their mark on his expression too. Visibly, he hadn’t really aged much, yet Archibald could already guess how many hardships the young man had endured.

  There was something else that didn’t immediately make sense – Percy’s gaze almost gave Archibald the impression that he was looking at a different person entirely, though he couldn’t put his finger on the exact reason for that.

  It had been even longer since he last saw Micky, the tiny crow standing on his grandson’s shoulder looking even more changed.

  Archibald already had a million questions, though he shoved most of them to the back of his mind, focusing on the most urgent matters. He was about to speak when his grandson wrinkled his nose.

  “When was the last time these bastards allowed you to take a shower?” Percy asked, tossing Eleazar a glare.

  To Archibald’s shock, the elder actually took a step back, raising his arms defensively!

  “It wasn’t up to us,” the old alchemist protested. “The Guild has to comply with the Root’s commands, much like your House does. You can blame this on Deimos.”

  ‘Since when are the elders scared of him?!’ Archibald wondered with a frown as he watched the strange scene unfold. He’d lived for centuries, yet this was his first time seeing a Violet walk on eggshells around a Yellow.

  “How convenient... You’ll give him and Orin a place to stay later,” Percy demanded, actually getting a respectful nod back from the old alchemist! Turning back to Archibald, he added, “Grandpa, I’ll make sure to get you some proper clothes after you wash up. For now, this will have to do.”

  Archibald didn’t get a chance to ask what his grandson meant when the crow opened his beak, releasing a stream of air and water that blended into a uniform drizzle. It doused him from head to toe, feeling rather cold, though nothing too uncomfortable for a Violet. He welcomed the familiar’s mana with open arms, allowing it to wash the grime off his scarred body. Honestly, he’d also rather talk to his grandson with some dignity, not souring their reunion by reeking like this.

  A few seconds later, Percy ripped a piece of fabric off his robe, pumping mana into its enchantments to regenerate it into a second set of magical clothes, passing it over to Archibald. Then he gestured at him to follow as he resumed his stroll along the corridor.

  “We have a lot of things to discuss, but first there’s another prisoner than needs rescuing,” the young man explained.

  Archibald nodded in a daze, impatient to sit down with his grandson. It had only been a couple of minutes, yet every time Percy did or said anything, he only seemed to breed more questions. How did this grey fabric work? What had happened to Micky? To Percy’s eyes? Was he the one who had used that domain earlier? And how was he here? Why was the violet-robed elder just following him around like his personal assistant?

  Suppressing his bubbling curiosity once more, Archibald focused on something more important.

  “Percy, you need to be wary about Deimos. It’s just a guess, but his domain feels way too powerful for a Blue’s. He’s trying to hide it, but I think he might have advanced already,” he warned, his tone grim. “Knowing him, he’ll be royally pissed once he realizes that you’ve broken me out.”

  The young man stopped in his tracks, flashing Archibald a mischievous grin, not a trace of fear on his face. His next words caused the elder beside him to visibly shudder.

  “You don’t have to worry about Deimos. He’s not such a bad person… once you give him a chance to cool off…”

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