Newly Summoned Demoness - Chapter 8 – Artificer’s Determination (Patreon)

Yolani scanned the man as she turned to bolt, a quick info card appearing informing her of his class and level.

[Bodyguard - Human – Lvl 140]

A second soldier was behind her and reached forward and grabbed her shoulder. “Going somewhere in a rush?” He asked gruffly, while grabbing the fabric of her leather jacket. His half helmet failed to hide the man’s rough features and scars, and the foulness of his breath washed over her face, filling her with a prickly anger.

[Armsman - Human – Lvl 155]

She pulled against his grasp, but his grip was strong. “Who are you? What the fuck do you want?”

She quickly glanced around; there was an alarming lack of city guards in the stairwell section, while other citizens purposefully ignored the altercation. That was so in line with the inhabitants of the city, it made her sick.

He chuckled at her but didn’t answer as a third man appeared from the alley, this one richly dressed. It wasn’t a surprise when identify revealed he was some type of noble.

[Noble - Human – Lvl 32]

The tone of the noble’s voice immediately set her on edge. “Young lady, I believe you have acquired something through vile deceit. It would be in your best interest to return it immediately.”

“I don’t have anything of yours.” Yolani hissed, then looked up at the guard holding her. “Let go of me, now.”

The guardsman laughed, and the noble continued. “Now, now. I knew I recognized you from the auction. You must be desperate to have resorted to such underhanded tactics as scamming that poor, noble shopkeeper. My servant reported you took his last shard for a tiny price.”

“I bought it from him fairly!” Yolani protested.

“Ah,” the noble waved a dismissive hand, as if swatting away her protestation like an annoying insect. “Perhaps not ‘wring’ by a base commoner standard.” He paused for dramatic effect before continuing, “But it just so happens that I need that mana shard much more than you do. So please avoid a scene and me having to order my men to beat it out of you.”

“I’m sure the city guards wouldn’t appreciate your threats.” She shot back. They were standing in broad daylight, surrounded by public witnesses. Even though all of them were still blatantly annoying the scene, probably because they recognized a noble was involved.

“My dear girl,” he said, meeting her eyes with a vile smile. “This is the Noble District; common trash like you have no rights here.”

There was a tinge of truth to his cruel words, but a Noble acting like a common thug wasn’t something that the guard was likely to ignore. That was more for the slums in the Mercenary District, where their presence was minimal. Maybe he had bribed the guards to look the other way, but there was no way they’d ignore battle.

She’d burned all her skill re-slots earlier in the day, which meant she had to use what she had on hand. Thankfully, she never unslotted her two primary skills: [Mana Manipulation] and [Aether Manipulation] and she was very confident in their usage.

Her other combat skills still counted at half affect even though they weren’t slotted, and she felt her entire body relax as she came to grips that she was not going to just give up the mana shard to this man and his thugs.

The armsman seemed to recognize the second she decided to fight back, and his hand clamped down on her shoulder painfully as he reached out to grab her other wrist.

He was too slow.

Her hand fell straight down to her wand, and she didn’t even have to point it at him to blast him with a maximum strength blast of wind.

He didn’t fly off the level like she had intended, probably using some skill to stand his ground, but he was blown back towards the edge.

The bodyguard stepped in front of his noble and raised a miniature crossbow at her and fired. This time she raised her artifice wand and deflected the projectile up toward the city cavern’s ceiling with a plate of hardened Aether.

That distraction was enough to give the armsman time to draw his blade and charge. She raised her wand to meet his slash, creating an attraction between the metal and her wand tip. The two weapons collided, and the poor-quality steel in the sword vibrated for a tenth of a second before shattering into a thousand metal shards to the hilt.

Yolani directed those into the man’s face and armor, and whatever defensive skill he had didn’t work. His shrieks attracted the attention of a passerby, sending them screaming for the guards.

The bodyguard cocked his weapon and aimed at her again. She scoffed and used a pulse of wind to drag his companion into the path of the bolt; the metal making a wet squelch as it buried itself into the man’s side. She shoved him down the slope and the men collided and went into an uncontrolled roll down the promenade.

The noble, somewhat predictably, looked utterly shocked. In a panic, he began to draw a magic sigil in the air, some type of offensive magic. As he finished his spell, he let out a shriek, “Deathly Binding!”

Calling out the name of a spell was extremely cliché, when it was so obviously not needed for the spell itself. Chains of glowing mana formed above his head, which was more concerning. They shot forward violently as he pointed at her.

She did not know what the spell actually was but her [Mana Manipulation] was more than high enough to pick the spell’s sigils apart from afar and cause the chains to freeze mid-air and then explode down their lengths in reverse, setting the man on fire.

He screeched his way into a sprint toward the level’s edge.

Several new heavily armed figures appeared from around the corner. “City Guard! Freeze!”

Yolani dropped her wand to hang on its chain, but the noble didn’t listen very well and ran right off the edge, eliciting a litany of curses from the guards.

They bound her hands behind her back promptly and then forced her to sit on the street’s edge. A healer helped the two soldiers, who immediately begin throwing a stream of accusations her way. When a guard finally escorted a singed but healed noble up to the investigation, all three eyes settled on her.

The noble’s furious ranting about assault, theft, and conspiracy would have been more serious if his stupid hat wasn’t still smoldering, at least in her opinion.

When a guard finally came to hear her side of the story, he had to haul her off to the entrance of an alley.

He glared at her, obviously already having taken a side. “Start talking.”

All the waiting had given her plenty of time to recount her side of the story. It probably wasn’t as good as if she’d kept [Crisis Management] slotted, but it wasn’t the wild ravings of the noble, at least.

The calmness in her voice surprised her probably as much as it did the guard. By the time she had finished recounting everything she could remember, she had his full attention. Although that might have simply been the fact that she wasn’t a simple commoner, and her father’s membership in the Artifice guild placed her firmly in the upper echelons of the middle class.

With more than enough funds to hire a lawful proprietor to defend her in the city’s courts. Especially when there had been plenty of witnesses to the entire thing, and a noble assaulting a young lady on her business in the middle of the day likely was terrible optics for whichever watch lieutenant was in charge of the district.

Panic started to overtake her mustered courage. The fight and confrontation hadn’t actually taken that long, but she had to grab her hand to stop it from shaking. She had one last trump card to play, even if she hated using it like that. “My friend Henri is a watchmen in the Artisan District’s Third Regiment, Artificer Row Company C. I would like it if you could chime him to come here, he should still be on duty for a few more hours.”

That more than anything else had an immediate effect and the condescending expression on the guardsman’s face flashed into a one-hundred percent neutral. “You’re friends?”

“We’re very close.” Yolani confirmed, without explaining more, allowing the guard to take his own interpretation.

The man’s eyes glazed over into a flat gray for a second, a common expression that she’d seen plenty of times before. It was the spell the guard used to contact each other through the city’s web way network that powered the maps and clock that all the citizens used to keep track of things.

Since she’d given him Name, Regiment, and Company, that was exactly enough information for him to contact Henri directly. If things hadn’t been so dire, she would have felt bad for bothering him after already using him as an escort earlier in the day.

A few seconds later, the man’s eye color returned, and his expression softened. “Your friend is on the way, miss. The watch lieutenant is on the way to sort through the mess, and you shouldn’t have to worry about your safety anymore, so you can calm down.”

“Ahh. Ah, thank you.” Yolani reached up and wiped her eyes. She wasn’t sure why her eyes had begun to water.

The guard had her turn around and released her cuffs, then told her to please sit back down and wait. She did so, watching the commotion down the street the noble was still making. When the guard she’d been talking to started talking to the guards who’d been dealing with the man, the screeching somehow managed to intensify.

The armsman and bodyguard were suddenly hauled onto their feet then led away, still in their cuffs. When one of the guards brought out a magical gag and silenced the noble, she knew that the man had been full of shit and puffed-up importance. A minor noble, then. They wouldn’t have dared treat anyone higher ranked like that, even for the girl of one of their own.

Relief filled her and the cramp in the muscles in her side released.

Time seemed to stretch out as she waited nervously. By the time he appeared around the corner, she’d calmed her heart and nerves down a bit. Still, she shot to her feet immediately.

“Yolani,” He greeted her with concern etched on his face before looking back at the restrained noble who was now receiving a lecture from the guard lieutenant, a noble himself. “What happened?”

She frowned and crossed her arms. “Did they tell you already?”

He nodded, but it was clear he wanted more. “They gave me a summary of what you told them.”

“It’s that. I bought the mana shard from the shop. On the way back home, they tried to rob me of it. Can you please take me home?” Yolani asked.

He looked her over more carefully. “They said you weren’t hurt?”

She looked away. “I’m not. I just want to go home.”

“Let me go talk to the other guards.” Henri told her.

She nodded and leaned against the stone wall. And waited. And waited more.

When he finally arrived, she felt numb, like she’d spent all her mental energy.

But he had a weak smile on his face that promised good news. “The shopkeeper confirmed your story, as well as the witnesses. The Lieutenant said you’re free to go, but nothing is likely to happen to the noble. He’s the son of the Lord of House Farchet, and they’re going to bury this.”

Her chest tightened. Of course nothing was going to happen to him. Stupid nobles. “I don’t care as long as they leave me alone. Can we go?”

Henri nodded and put his arm around her shoulder. She didn’t object and leaned into him. It was actually sort of nice. Nice enough to ignore the daggers, the noble stared into her on the way down.

The rest of the trip went by quickly, and she surrendered all their safety to Henri as she zoned out. When they suddenly were in front of her father’s shop, it was a surprise. He was waiting for them, waiting on the porch, smoking one of his pipes.

Yolani released her escort and rushed to him and hugged him before beginning to sob. He patted her on the back reassuringly. “There, there. It’s alright,” he paused, then looked over at Henri who swallowed.

“Do I need to kill this young man?” her father asked.

She shook her head. “No…no, Papa. Henri helped me. I got the mana shard.”

“That’s my girl. You did well. Let’s go inside and talk about what happened,” he said. Looking at Henri, the two men nodded to each other.

She gave him a parting thanks and wave before following her father inside.

When she saw the workshop, she wished she hadn’t and froze in the doorway. “What have you done?” Yolani hissed.

Her father looked at her with a perplexed expression.

Two extra light stones were laying neatly beside the first near her father’s crafting table; their seemingly innocent inner radiance glowing ominously while they sat there—as if mocking her with their presence.