According to Otto, despite Dad being on afternoon shift, he had gone to work at the east gate long before it was time to switch shifts. He immediately went to the commander, explained the circumstances, and had him organize a meeting with the other commanders in the center of the city. There he told them what Damuel had told him—that the archduke was absent and that there might be forged permits—before returning to the east gate.
“By the time the captain came back, they had already let a noble’s carriage train through. The commander of the east gate hadn’t told the guards anything, so they never even considered that the permit might be fake. The captain only learned of their mistake when it was time for his shift. He blasted the heck out of the commander for not telling all of the guards what he’d said, then ran off to the temple to make sure you were okay. You didn’t see him there?”
I instinctively looked up at Damuel, more concerned about the fact that a noble’s carriage train had been let inside than the fact I had missed Dad on the way here. His eyes were open wide in disbelief.
“They let carriages through?! Don’t tell me, was it the same noble from the other day?”
“Yep. You sure know a lot—it was the one and the same. Right now all the guards at the east gate are looking for them, but nobody’s found them. Maybe they’re already in the Noble’s Quarter? I would have thought that knights at the north gate would have caught them there, though,” Otto wondered aloud. It seemed that despite the archduke having forbidden the entry of nobles from outside the city into the duchy, not all soldiers shared the same sense of danger and urgency.
“You contacted the Knight’s Order, didn’t you?!” Damuel shouted, his eyebrows shooting up in anger, but Otto put a hand on his chin and had to think before answering.
“...Who knows? Maybe the commander did. The captain ran off straight away, so maybe they don’t know yet.”
“You should have reported this immediately, fool!” Damuel immediately took out his shining wand as he yelled at Otto for his lack of urgency. He ignored Otto—who was murmuring “Huh? Wait, you’re a noble?” after seeing the wand appear out of thin air—and shot the red light signaling a call for aid into the air.
The knights should be coming now, I thought to myself in relief while looking up at the red light shooting upward—only to see Tuuli disappear out of the corner of my eye.
“Wha? Tuu—” Before I could even turn around, something prickly covered my face and made my vision go dark. I felt myself be lifted into the air, then started bouncing up and down. “Eek?!”
I could tell from the arms wrapped around my legs and back that someone had picked me up and started running. In a panic, I tried flailing about, but the best I could do while restrained was just weakly hit my hands against whatever rough thing was covering me. Judging by the streaks of light poking through the holes in the cloth in front of my face, I could guess that they had pulled a bag over me then picked me up.
“H-Help...”
“Myne! Tuuli!”
“Give them back!”
I heard Lutz and Damuel yell behind the veil of darkness, with several pairs of footsteps racing after me. Tuuli had been kidnapped as well; I could hear what sounded like her screaming. Given that the bustle of the main street was growing fainter, the kidnapper was probably running the opposite way down the alley.
“Captain! Myne’s in that bag!”
“LET GO OF MY DAUGHTER!”
I heard Otto yell, then my Dad roar with anger, and suddenly my body was spinning through the air. I assumed the kidnapper had thrown me aside to defend against Dad’s attack. In the darkness I couldn’t tell what was happening, and could do nothing as I hit the stone ground and rolled across it.
“Ow!”
“Myne!”
“Sister Myne!”
Just as I heard Lutz and Gil let out panicked cries, the bag was tugged, forcing me to sit up. I blinked in the darkness, and seconds later the bag was ripped off, giving me my vision back. The sudden brightness made me squint.
I kept sitting on the ground, looking around as I tried to adjust to the light again. Lutz and Gil peered at me while Damuel scanned the area, standing protectively by my side. Behind him to the right was Dad, his spear drawn, and Otto.
“Where’s Tuuli?!”
“Over there,” Gil replied, his eyes full of anger and frustration. I followed where he was looking and saw Tuuli being held hostage—a man had a knife at her throat and was backing away to escape. Tuuli, her eyes locked on the knife, was frozen in terror.
“N-No...” she choked out, the blood draining from her face as she trembled, tears welling up in her eyes.
All of the mana inside me immediately boiled over, coursing through my body. In a single instant, something inside of me snapped like a twig.
“Myne?!”
“Sister Myne?!”
I slowly stood up. My body was hot enough to boil water, but my mind was as cool and composed as an icy river. I had spent about a year in the temple offering my mana on a regular basis, including during a large-scale ritual, and apparently I had gotten much better at controlling my mana than I thought. The Crushing that had hit all those in eyesight back when I was furious at the High Bishop could now be directed at a single target—my instincts made me certain of that.
“Hey. What do you think you’re doing to my Tuuli?” I asked, glaring at the man pressing his knife against Tuuli’s neck.
His face immediately changed. Before it had been red with anger and adrenaline, but now it was a darkish purple as though he had
