“...” Secretary Warden stared.
“...” Ms. Lisa stared.
“...” Aurelius stared back.
The room seemed to have completely frozen still like a tundra neck deep in snow. A really reasonable outcome from what Aurelius had just said.
“...Adam Unclass you say?” Secretary Warden said, clearing his throat in the process.
“I see that we’ve been entertaining a farce by students…” He continued, reaching down under the table onto his hips.
Ms. Lisa, the commissioner who had dove into Aurelius’s memories, pointed her hand at Auelius’s head now, ready to deal with him at a moments’ notice.
“You do understand the consequences of lying to the Commission, correct?” Secretary Warden growled, along with a light click coming from under the table.
The man then proceeded to pull out a revolver threateningly, pointing its barrel sharply at Aurelius’s very stressed face and proceeded to cock its hammer back.
Aurelius’s face immediately turned from confidence to complete horror.
Shit. Did I push too far? Aurelius thought to himself, scrambling his brain to make this whole situation a little less… extreme as soon as possible. Aurelius had no idea how trigger happy this man was.
“Err… Sir… I swear on my honour as a mage that I am telling the truth. There was no sort of memory tempering or illusion magic involved in this claim…” Aurelius said carefully, very much concerned for his safety.
Tiberius the traitorous bastard had also slowly started to inch away from Aurelius, mouthing things along the lines of ‘I don't know this lunatic!’ and looking as baffled and innocent as possible. An amazing friend indeed.
“Are you willing to notarise that?” Secretary Warden asked seriously, reaching into his pockets to pull out a handful of folded paper.
Then, with one hand still on the trigger of his revolver, the man proceeded to separate out the stubborn pieces of paper until he located the one that he was looking for. The Commission incident report form.
…Did that man really carry that around everywhere?
Secretary Warden proceeded to fold the other pages sloppily along their fold lines and stuffed it back to his pocket expertly, and handed Aurelius a slightly crumpled piece of the Commission incident report form.
Aurelius simply nodded his head, and gestured for a pen.
Fascinatingly, Secretary Warden, now rather comically, reached into his other pocket and pulled out a pen with the Magic Commission monogrammed on its sleek body earning another round of confused blinks from Aurelius.
There were like a bunch of pens on the shelf behind him with the magazines…
“Who or what was your notary in signing this particular contract?” Secretary Warden asked, unconcerned with Aurelius’s judgemental blinks.
Aurelius paused for a second.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
‘Notarisation’ was a collection of wind elemental magic that was capable of binding a signatory to the document at hand and came in diverse forms.
Most commonly were charms produced for mercantile transactions, useful in everyday transactions and enchanted with low level spells. Reusable charms forged or crafted in the shape of stamps and pens were common gifts for merchants as well.
However, more valuable contracts or agreements such as those conducted between Magical Families or large merchants were notarised by wind mages contracted by legal firms or alternatively through swearing a vow under the gaze of a wind spirit of decent ranking.
Currently, Aurelius was unmistakably bound by an incredibly high level Notarisation spell. Although he had no idea what the exact ‘rank’ of the spell was, he was certain that it was at least on par with spells at the level of archmages, if not sages given the fact that it had followed him past death.
“It was a pen…” Aurelius started carefully. He wasn’t sure what the reaction to the nature of the notary could be, especially since it was bound to be an item of relatively high rank.
“A pen?” Secretary Warden asked in surprise.
“Yes. The one with golden gilded patterns on its surface.” Aurelius replied.
“...” Secretary Warden stared.
“...” Aurelius stared back.
“You’re kidding.” Secretary Warden replied after a few moments, his face scrunching up further in concern. It seemed that he recognised the description of the item.
Aurelius just shrugged and pointed at the crumpled piece of paper that he was busily scribbling on.
The Commissioner named Ms. Lisa, however, stared blankly at the whole situation, apparently not privy to what the item that Secretary Warden had recognised.
While plenty similar pens must have existed, Aurelius was happy that the description of a pen that Adam Unclass uses to notarise contracts had fortunately been specific enough to give at least Secretary Warden enough of an idea of what it was. He was a mid-ranking commission bureaucrat after all.
This may give him a clue to find out more about the nature of the magic placed on him and see if he could cheat it and break it somehow.
The atmosphere in the room remained rather chilly over the next few minutes as Aurelius furiously scribbled on the piece of paper.
Aurelius then slid the completed form over to the two rather tense commissioners as slowly as he could, careful not to create any kinds of ‘misunderstandings’ in the process.
It would be a total waste to have his brain decorate the lovely white wallpaper of this room after coming so far along on his ‘ingenious’ plan.
This time, Secretary Warden opted to reach into his breast pocket to pull out a small stamp leading Aurelius to wonder what exactly this man kept in his pockets.
Clearly he had prepared… all sorts of bureaucratic gizmos for all kinds of situations. Aurelius would now hardly be surprised if the man proceeded to pull out a whole typewriter from his back pocket.
“Hmm… Let’s see… Adam Unclass made you sign a contract with you to keep your mouth shut about an incident and because of your self proclaimed ‘value’…” Secretary Warden muttered, skimming through Aureilus’s handwriting half-heartedly.
“You are under the protection of the Commission. Or so you claim. And you swear that this is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth not involved with mind magic or with illusion magic etcetera, etcetera… Or so you claim.” He muttered.
With a small amount of mana, Secretary Warden then proceeded to stamp the paper in front of Aurelius’s eyes.
The paper reacted to the action, and the stamped area emitted a golden glow. Thin strands of light then wrapped itself about the words of the report, encasing it in a golden cocoon.
The glowing threads soon finished binding the words, and the whole paper let out a light golden light. And to the two commissioner’s absolute shock, the threads shattered, and the glow disappeared, verifying the truthfulness of the statement.
“Well?” Aurelius asked awkwardly, his eyes staring cautiously at the still pointed barrel of the revolver on the desk.
“Well, I need to take this to the top is what.” Secretary Warden snapped, wiping sweat off of his forehead and rubbing the bridge of his nose in stress.
“Ms. Lisa, bring me Sage Yeltz.”
???
“...Who are you?” Sage Yeltz asked the moment she stepped into the room, eyes narrowed with the usual haughty aura surrounding her from head to toe.
Cheerful as alw- Aurelius thought before stopping himself. He didn’t feel really inclined to offend the sage so soon this loop.
“Good afternoon honourable Sage Yeltz.” Aurelius greeted, bowing respectfully at the burly woman in front of him.
Tiberius had been shipped off to be interrogated separately at the moment, and Aurelius was pretty sure that they would put him into a safety training class immediately afterwards for the incident earlier that day as well.
The Commission was strangely efficient in those ways after all…
“You haven’t answered my question.” Sage Yeltz said simply, taking a seat across from Aurelius.
Sensing another throbbing headache about to descend on himself, Aurelius mustered up all of his courage to say 4 simple words.
“I am your apprentice.”
