Chapter 78 Can’t See

  “A test?” Esmerelda blurted out. She barely kept from exclaiming her surprise and indignation across the entire cafe. Even knowing what Lenna’s aura was doing to her only did so much to help her mind stay clear.

  “Yes.” Isaac stated simply. “I live in Safeharbor.” He reminded Lucius’ date. “And though I wish Lucius all of the happiness in the world, I would also like to live alongside a ruler who is competent.”

  “Alongside?” Esmerelda repeated.

  “Yes.” Isaac once more gave her an answer that needed little if any exposition. It was a statement of fact and nothing else.

  “Does that mean that the Arbencroft dukedom does not rule Safeharbor but it is simply managing it?” Esmerelda asked with a concerned flick of her eyes towards Lucius.

  “You misunderstand.” Isaac thought about correcting her but instead pushed it off onto someone else because he really wanted to know what the young duke-to-be thought about their situation. “Lucius, care to explain?”

  “I am not privy to everything you and my parents have discussed, nor would I shout it to the world even if I was, but as I see it, you have more or less hired yourself out to my family for money and favors.” Lucius did not paint Isaac and Lenna in a good light at that moment.

  “It’s a bit more complicated than that.” Isaac defended himself with a frown. “But that was how it started.” He conceded. “Now though, it is a partnership. Your parents rule over Safeharbor and help me with our business. Lenna and I watch over the city and hit every serious threat before it gets within reach of the walls. Your father keeps his image as a kind, fair, and benevolent ruler. My Phantom and I execute those hiding in the dark who do things that I, and nearly all of sapient life, find repulsive without the public being any wiser.”

  “That is the structure of our relationship with your parents, but we are also their friends.” Lenna added. “It is a natural friendship that came about simply from proximity and your mother’s innate magnetism. Even if we stopped working together at all, there isn’t a doubt in my mind that we would stay in contact as friends.”

  “I was only peripherally aware of your underground actions. Mostly from witnessing the aftermath.” Lucius confessed. “Though it does fill in a few blanks that I had been questioning.”

  “So a high noble and a demigod exist in the same place with neither bowing to the other?” Esmerelda still seemed to be having trouble understanding the power dynamic of their relationship.

  “Correct.” Isaac replied. “Whether that relationship will continue on to the next generation of Arbencrofts is entirely up to the competency of your rule. If we never feel the need to step in and handle it ourselves, then we may continue a relationship of partners and friends. If we are forced to take control, then it will never be fully relinquished back.”

  “If I seem impudent, I apologize, however, I must ask, are you, the one who proclaims to be ‘The Lord of all that is Dark’, the one who gets to decide when you must step in?” Esmerelda questioned. It was incredibly impudent of her, even if he wasn’t actually a demigod, just from his perceived standing as an equal to a duke.

  Isaac might have usually played up her slight, maybe used it to casually intimidate her into a more subservient position, but this was the woman who was trying to court Izen and Sera’s only baby boy, so he kept himself mostly in check. “Yes. Lenna and I will make the decision collectively. Though she usually defers to me to make decisions, I will still ensure that it is also what she believes to be right before acting. She is the safeguard you are looking for.” Isaac explained but then had a realization. “What is wrong with your Foresight?” He came out of nowhere and totally blindsided her.

  “My what?” Esmerelda very poorly tried to buy herself enough time to come up with an excuse.

  “You heard me quite clearly.” Isaac stated. “You didn’t see any of this coming. I cannot imagine a world where a teenage girl blessed with the eyes of Time, surnamed Knowledge and named after the wind, would not try her hardest to see how her date was going to go ahead of time.”

  “How do you know what my name means?” Esmerelda questioned him without any hesitation.

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  Isaac’s brows dipped slightly, not in the scowl that Esmerelda saw, but in pain as he realized that he wasn’t sure how he knew that information. “Which name?” Isaac asked her.

  “Both?” Esmerelda’s voice squeaked.

  “He doesn’t know.” Lenna whispered to the poor girl. “Something happened to him and a lot of his old knowledge has been lost. Whenever it looks like he is in pain from thinking about something, change the subject.”

  “I, uh, pleasant weather we’re having?” Esmerelda tried to change the topic so poorly that it made the other three at the table chuckle. “What?”

  “That was horrendous.” Lucius told her honestly. “But truthfully, it was also quite cute.” Esmerelda blushed but tried to pretend that she hadn’t.

  “Back to the topic at hand, what happened to your foresight?” Lenna pressed. She felt it too. The girl was constantly pulling in mana and burning it in equal measure. Both she and Isaac also felt their wedding rings get warm from their constant protection against low level mental magic. Based on the circumstances, the only options were awareness or charm magic. Seeing as Lucius was not head over heels in love with the girl, that narrowed it down to awareness magic of some kind. Considering her apparent eye color, which coincided with the time and soul color of magic, divination made the most sense. The girl was also more affected by Lenna’s passive presence than Isaac had expected which led to one of two possibilities. The first was that she was just weak willed, which was a valid possibility as Isaac and Lenna did not know her well enough to discard it. The second was that she was even more connected and sensitive to the souls around her than she otherwise should have been, like from trying to read one’s soul with her softly glowing indigo eyes.

  “How did you know?” Esmerelda questioned with eyes that had once again gone wide with a hint of fear and false bravado.

  “That doesn’t matter.” Isaac shut her down. “What does matter is that even if it was only a hunch, you have proven it to be fact by your actions and reactions alone. So, what happened to it? Does it have anything to do with why you have chosen Lucius?”

  Esmerelda gulped under the sudden scrutiny. “I can’t see you.” She told Isaac in a low whisper. “I could not see Lucius until I met you, for some reason, which was what originally led me to him. I needed to know why I could not read his fortune.”

  “You just can’t see me?” Isaac wondered. “What do I look like?”

  “Nothing, blackness, like I am looking into an endless abyss that is also a solid wall.” She explained. “Is that enough?”

  Isaac hummed in thought as their food arrived. It was a pleasant spread of freshly baked bread, sliced fruits, and a spiced warm milk that gave off scents of cinnamon and apples. There were also two cups of water, as Isaac had requested. The barista, who was distinctly not a waitress, bowed and returned to the coffee bar where she continued to serve those who approached her and asked for coffee or some other hot drink on the cool morning.

  “Like, right now? Or only in your visions of the future?” Isaac wondered.

  “Only in my visions of the future.” Esmerelda expressed. “I can see you with my eyes perfectly fine, though my divination is sliding off of you, which I can only assume is from an item. Otherwise, most people would have already gotten irritated that someone was constantly assaulting their mental defenses. The spell is so subtle that Lucius is not even putting up any resistance, but you are different. It is like my spell has approached an impassable gate. You are there, but it cannot get to you.”

  Isaac nodded and tasted a bite of a small fruit that he couldn’t quite place until he got a taste. It was an apricot, a tree that he had yet to see with his own eyes which meant that it was imported yet still fresh. “I don’t know what that means, but I can only imagine that it has something to do with my power, what about Lenna?” Isaac questioned the young mage.

  “The same on all accounts, though I did not hear her in my vision as I did you.” Esmerelda confessed.

  “You heard me?” Isaac asked.

  “I felt your voice in my soul.” Esmerelda shivered.

  “What did I say?” Isaac wondered.

  Esmerelda shook her head. “Nothing that I could understand.”

  Isaac shrugged. “Well, that’s fine. The future is meant to be unknowable. That is half the fun of taking every step. Imagine if my boot fell through the floor. Imagine if we were suddenly attacked by a group of assassins or dragons. Imagine if the sun were to suddenly go dark. All of those things, those thoughts, those worries and curiosities, are just a bit of what keeps life interesting. Knowing what is going to happen before it happens, may be a great way to avoid catastrophes, but it is a horribly boring way to live your life.” Isaac told her. “Have fun making your contingency plans, train so you can use your escape routes, learn all of the ways that someone can be attacked, and finally, enact it all when the unforeseen finally knocks at your door.”

  Lucius shook his head. “Only you would enjoy the risk of dying at a moment’s notice.” He told Isaac.

  Isaac waved his finger back and forth in a ‘no’ gesture. “I have an item that prevents that. Getting ambushed is still one of the most exhilarating feelings that I have ever felt. Your blood is pumping faster than it has ever pumped before. Your heart is beating harder than it has ever beat before. You see more. You hear more. The world and time deviate as your mind is pushed to its limits…” Isaac let his voice trail off and then he turned to look at Lenna.

  “No.” She told him without him needing to say anything else. That didn’t stop him from opening his mouth to speak. “No, Isaac, we are not paying someone to try to assassinate you.”

  Isaac waved her off. “That was only a passing thought.” He assured her. “No, I have an entirely unrelated idea, what if the reason we can’t find Morgan Effy and Arnold Drake is because they have a blessing similar to a dragon’s?” He postulated. “They have evaded every attempt at magic tracking that Arthur Von Sasston of all people could afford to try and Phantom hasn’t come up with any intel on them at all. They vanished off the face of Primatia just like Chatohsha did.”

  “Divine protection.” Lenna muttered. “Maybe, though, what godly being would bless them? Who would have stealth or magic resistance of that level baked into their being to such an extent that their blessing would be so all encompassing?”

  “They would also not be opposed to pissing off Lua.” Isaac added. “That limits who it could be by quite a lot.”

  “A drow god blessing a human, or at the very least half human?” Lenna wondered. “I cannot see a world where they would do that unless they were forced to by Dri’El for some grand scheme.”

  “You know, the irony of us stumbling across a plot of some kind while waiting for a plot of our own to finish cooking is not lost on me, if it is true anyway.” Isaac commented.

  “Should we say something to Klein or Gilgamesh?” Lenna asked. “Just in case.”

  Isaac hummed in thought. “Maybe… let’s start with letting Arthur know of the possibility and the next time we see any of the demigods, we can bring it up, but it seems like it could still be a long shot for now.”

  “I am so lost.” Lucius commented from right next to Isaac who had all but forgotten that he was even there.