Hugo

We rode like the wind, barely taking any breaks or rests. I would fall asleep while still on the horse, trusting Mother to keep me from falling off. It was rough, if I were to be honest. My body ached all over, especially my bottom. Thankfully, Mother would periodically use her healing spell to hear said aches, or else I probably wouldn't be able to walk once the ride was over.

As a result, we reached Mira in just a single week.

We entered the city in the morning, and naturally, we immediately rode to the academy. We only got off our horses when we were at the gates, with Mother demanding to meet Marina right away.

We waited for what felt like an eternity at the waiting room, until the guard returned with a teacher, who told us that Marina was indeed not around. In fact, she hadn't been around since the last two weeks. 

"But please, Sir, Madam, do not fret! She simply went with Master Marjoram to his home! She finally accepts his love! Oh, wonderful, isn't it?"

To her, it was just gossip. But to us, it was as if thunder had slapped us on our faces.

The letter is right! Marina had indeed gone to that witch's place!

And judging by her reaction, she doesn't know that Marina didn't go there willingly.

I was holding hope… praying that the letter isn't speaking the truth. But it is. It absolutely is. Because there's no way in hell she'll want to go with him to his house out of the blue! 

"...Thank you," Mother replied, her smile cold as ice. "His home… where is it?"

"Why, on the Uvarsa Mountain, of course! Around twenty days from here if you take a carriage,” the teacher explained, still with her cheerful, innocent smile. “Just tell the stagecoach office that you want to get to Rau Uvarsa, the province’s capital. The mountain is right beside it. I suggest you send a letter first though, since you’re not exactly allowed to go to her estate unannounced. Though if you ask me, she’ll be perfectly happy to receive you all unannounced! You’re Marina’s family after all!”

Mother exchanged looks towards Father and then to me.

We three knew exactly what to do next.

Before we left though, I remembered something. There was another person here that really cared about Marina the same way we did. And perhaps, if we utilized her connection and stature, we could gain a significant advantage over that witch!

“Ma'am," I spoke up for the first time. "Can you call Alincia as well? Alincia Salamander. I heard she's a good friend of my big sister. I wanna ask if she wants to come along as well." I put up my innocent boy act.

"Ah, right, Miss Alincia! Of course! Please wait here for a moment!"

She gave a little now before leaving.

"Alincia?" Father spoke. "Oh right, that friend of hers. You're smart, Hugo!" He patted my shoulder with a grin. "If we can get her family on our side, then we won't have to barge into that witch's mansion! We won't have to fight at all!"

"I doubt it would be that easy though," Mother spoke, voicing her skepticism with a dark look on her face. "I feel if Vera's going all the way by doing this, she must have some form of support or at least approval from the rest of the Council. They wouldn't intervene just because we asked them to."

"True enough." Father sighed. "Well, it's worth a try, at the very least."

When the teacher returned however, she only brought bad news.

"I'm sorry, but Miss Salamander isn't here today. She left yesterday, I believe with Miss Brine."

"Miss Brine?" My eyebrows rose.

"Yes, Miss Elunmidis Brine. She told us that she would be having some one on one training with Miss Salamander, so they would be gone for a week at the very least."

"That's unfortunate. Do you know where they went?”

“Unfortunately, they didn’t tell,” she replied with a sad tone. “But since Miss Brine also mentioned how they would hunt strong monsters, it’s most likely somewhere quite a number away from here. Only weak monsters exist around here after all.”

“...I see. Tell her about our visit once she returns if you could, Ma'am." I gave her a polite smile.

Elunmidis Brine… that girl Big Sis told me about…

...Oh, she’s part of this, isn’t it? She’s purposefully leading Alincia away from us, so that we can’t ask for her help. Knowing how much Alincia likes Marina, she’ll definitely help us if she tells her the situation.

So this really means this entire kidnapping is orchestrated with the approval of the rest of the Council? Or at the very least, Selendia approves of it...

“P.S. I wouldn't suggest trying to negotiate. Every mage in the Council is selfish to the core after all.”

That letter was right after all. They probably don’t consider anyone below them to have any rights whatsoever, not that this world has a concept of human rights in the first place.

"My, of course! What a well-behaved child you are, little one!" She suddenly ruffled my hair, catching me a little off-guard. "Your sister certainly could learn a thing or two from you!"

My ears perked up. "What do you mean?"

"Well, she's not rude or anything, but she's… well… a tad standoffish, for a lack of a better term. She doesn't get along with the other students, except for Miss Salamander and Master Marjoram. Being serious is good but I feel she's a little bit too serious, if you catch my drift. N-no offense meant, of course! T-this is just my silly, personal opinion!" She quickly added, clearly not wanting to offend me or Father and Mother.

Ah, I think I can imagine what she means. Once Sis decides she doesn't like someone, it's really hard to change her mind. From the exiling she gets when Merinda was around, to how now a large chunk of the school thinks she's an arrogant and uppity person for rejecting that shitty hobbit, no wonder she doesn't put any effort in knowing anyone else.

In that way, she is strikingly similar to my old self.

"Well, that's strange…" I spoke up, still putting up my act. "When she's with me, she's always kind and warm—not standoffish in the slightest! She's a good girl, my sister! I have no doubt about it in the slightest!" I smiled brightly. I knew Marina could look like that from the outside, but as her little brother, I wanted others to receive her friendly warmth and experience her charms as well!

Not that hobbit though. That guy can just go to hell for all I care, especially after this whole mess. He must be in cahoot with his grandmother! There’s no doubt about it!

“Ooh, how nice! She really must love you a lot, doesn’t she?” She smiled, ruffling my hair again. Suddenly, she looked up to Mother and asked, “How old is he, Ma’am? If he’s of age, then we would certainly welcome him as a student in the academy!”

“Oh, he’s ten this year,” Mother replied, her smile slightly turning more genuine. “I don’t know about him enrolling here though. He always says he wants to be an adventurer instead!”

“That’s a shame, Madam! At least let us polish his magic skill first here! If her sister’s that talented, then surely he would share at least some of that talent, yes? He’ll learn so much better here than if he were to learn magic by himself out there! Not to mention that he can help his sister get more friends!”

“There’s no need for that,” Mother answered, clearly happy of the praises she was showering onto me. “You see, he’s already—”

“Ahem, we’d better get going now, Renee.”

Father suddenly interrupted her. At first, I didn’t understand why he did, but I think I now knew why.

He didn’t want to tell anyone related to the Magocracy that I was already a Master-level mage when I was still a ten year old boy. Because he knew if they knew, I would suffer the same fate as Marina did. I would be hunted down for my talent, with possibly a girl or even two whose parents were part of the Council throwing themselves at me to become my wife. Or, to be more truthful, I would be hunted by them. I doubt I would keep my Greenwood family name once I got married with them.

Ya know, at first, having a harem of girls all wanting to make babies with you might sound nice (I’m pretty sure it’s a premise for quite a number of harem stories back in my world), but with what’s currently happening to Marina, I know it will turn ugly sooner or later. And I won’t have any freedom in the end. I would just be a puppet for their family essentially. So I have to thank Father for doing that.

----------------

Once we left the Academy, we immediately went to a bookstore to get a map of the region as Father suggested. As I went browsing however, a certain book caught my eye.

Hmm? This is—

I picked it up, examining the title closer. “The Great Ice Snake Witch, Vera Marjoram, An Autobiography” was what it said on the cover.

This is a book about her!

I immediately opened it. Not because I admired her, certainly not, but because if there’s any info here that we could use to our advantage…

“Hey, pay up first, then you can read it.”

The shopkeeper, a grumpy old man with eyebrows so thick it should've covered his eyes, prodded me with his stick from behind.

"R-right…"

No plastic to cover the books like in the bookstores back home, obviously.

I paid for the book and map, before going to the restaurant just across the road, whether Father and Mother were waiting.

We had our lunch there, while laying down the map on the table to examine what route we should take.

“Hmm, there’s only one road we could take to her province. We took the East Gate from here, going northwest to the town of Formatua where we would take the southeastern road, crossing the Kudasjarvo River at the bridge. Once we did, we would already be in her territory.”

I gulped. She might put her soldiers there to stop us from entering.

“Then, we followed the road eastward until we reached Rau Uvarsa. Then we would climb the mountain. We should expect fierce resistance there. Remember, Vera most likely wouldn’t want to alarm the entire Magocracy on what she was doing. To the citizens, the Council could do no wrong.”

I nodded. So it’s most likely for her to just put all her forces on said mountain, away from the prying eyes of outsiders.

“Just like before, we’ll ride non-stop there. Are you okay with that, Hugo?” Father asked, looking straight at me.

“Of course, Father. I’m ready.”

“Also, we’ll purchase winter clothes before we depart.”

He didn’t need to explain why, of course.

Just wait, Sis. I’m coming for you. Just hang in there!

---------------

After finishing up our meal, we promptly resumed our frantic ride with the wind.

The teacher said that it would take around twenty days to get there, so we aimed for ten. It was another non-stop ride, with me sitting in front of Mother on her horse.

We reached Formatua in merely four days, crossing through the Lazarus Plains. It’s a large stretch of green plains around Mira. We could see farmlands built around the tiny villages we went through on the way, though most of the plains itself were yet to be cultivated.

From Formatua, we reached the Kudasjarvo River and Bridge in just a single day. To my pleasant surprise, we weren’t stopped by Vera’s soldiers when we tried to cross. In fact, there wasn’t even a checkpoint. You could go straight to the other side, with only a sign stating that we were entering the Marjoram Province.

So if she’s going to stop us, then it would be at that mountain, huh? So not only is she going to be stronger than all of us, she would also have the home advantage.

Not good. Not good at all. But what other choice do we have? We have to get Marina back, before it’s too late!

After we crossed the bridge, the environment around us changed immediately.

The green plains we were in before—that disappeared completely, replaced by a barren taiga, stretching for miles. And the closer we got to our destination, the colder the temperature dropped. It was as if we were moving to a pleasant subtropic region into a frigid Northern Europe-like one.

Heh, how fitting for a region ruled by an ice mage.

I do wonder though, how the climate of this fantasy world works. To have a taiga and grassland side by side like this, that can’t be natural.

...Wait, hold on, I think that book I bought at Mira talked about this.

Any resting time I got, I would also use to skim through the book, even though most of its contents were just self-aggrandizing nonsense that I couldn't care less about, and that the facts I found there could just be exaggerations or outright lies. Still, I had to gain as much information as I could on the enemy we were going to face.

T-this is… this can’t be real, can it?

There, I discovered it—the part where the book talked about how she turned this whole province into a cold taiga many, many years ago when she had her fight against the previous ruling magic family that she overthrew. They were the Albatross Clan, with their leader being Lana Albatross, a Grandmaster-level Wind mage.

Wow, this book… it doesn’t even bother to sound neutral.

It actively chastised the Albatrosses, saying that they were weak and they deserved their destruction completely for “stagnating in their magic development, to the point that a complete outsider could beat them”. After her victory, to prevent any attempts of “cowardly backstabbing”, as the book put it, Vera killed every single Albatross that still lived. I could imagine her doing it with the children too.

And there goes my idea of contacting any remaining Albatross to ask for their help too...

No wonder Marina is so disgusted by them.

Another part I found interesting was how apparently, the Albatrosses were considered as traitors who “secretly want to sell the Magocracy to the Holy Empire”. That might explain why the other houses were alright with Vera just overthrowing them with force like that, though knowing the Magocracy’s propaganda, they probably weren’t actual traitors. Maybe sympathizers, who wanted a better relationship between the two nations.

I didn’t buy the taiga part though. I mean, no mage could be that powerful, right? It must be just another exaggeration, to make her more amazing that she really is to the populace.

If it’s not, well, our already slim chance of winning against her would go down straight to zero, I’m afraid.

I also went through the book to see if there was any hint of her fighting style that I could use. But nope, nothing whatsoever. Only stuff like “Woo, she’s a powerful mage that can turn the very air itself into ice!” I can already figure that out on my own, thank you very much.

There was an info that we actually could use though, and that was the knowledge of her summon. Just like her namesake, she could summon a gigantic front snake to do her bidding. It had freezing cold breath that it could use as an attack, a freezing cold body that could freeze anyone who touched it's skin for a second, and it would leave ice crystals behind its trail.

Well, that's another hurdle we somehow have to overcome…

The ride to Rau Uvarsa took us another four days, making the whole trip only taking nine days (and a half, I guess, since we arrived at dusk). We were even faster than our original prediction.

Quaint was a good way to describe the place. It was definitely smaller and less busy than Mira. And a lot of the structures and buildings there looked old. And it didn’t even have a proper wall, as most of it were only remains of what used to be a wall.

Well, Vera isn’t big on maintaining her city, it seems.

Another thing peculiar to the city was the surprisingly large amount of gnomes we found walking in the streets. I could only guess one reason, and that being Vera, a gnome herself, being the ruler of the province. Maybe they were all immigrants from other countries, wanting to be led by another gnome instead of a human.

Still, I couldn’t help but feel weird walking amongst them like this. I was already used to looking upwards to talk with other people, as I was still a kid and all, but now, I could talk to them eye to eye directly just fine.

Let’s see… I think that book also talks about this city. It’s her city after all, so it must reflect well on her.

Ah, I remember! “The Marjoram Province is ruled wisely by her The Great Witch. Turning the region cold allows its people to cultivate rare herbs and plants that only would grow in such a temperature, increasing the wealth of the region heaps and bounds from when the failure Lana ruled it.”

As much as I despised it, I had to agree with the book. I did indeed see rows and rows of strange-looking bushes of plants I didn’t know about when we rode here on the road. So they were actually this region’s equivalent to the normal farmlands other, warmer regions had. Just like at the Lazarus Plains though, most of the taiga weren’t really developed.

Though I doubt that the transition to a completely different agriculture when she took over was smooth. How many farmlands did she destroy, if she truly was the one responsible for turning the whole region colder? How many farmers did she starve by doing so?

We took an inn for the night, with I getting my own room while Father and Mother had their own. Father told me to rest as well as I could, as tomorrow would be our confrontation day with Vera.

That night, I didn’t hear a single noise from their room.