“What!” Alex exclaimed in alarm. He had spent the entire evening running around in the supermarket, and now she was letting him know it was pointless?

“Well yeah. Obviously!” Nekya replied, tilting her head.

“What’s obvious here?” Alex said. He felt like pulling his hair out.

“The Wormhole can only teleport living things,” she replied shaking her head. “Otherwise wouldn’t we just send golem constructs?”

Alex’s face fell. It did make sense to send golems instead of mercenaries. Granted they were expensive toys. But for the price of holding a planet in check, they would definitely be great deterrents.

“So we can’t take anything? Wands, staffs, swords?” Alex asked.

“Not unless it’s a soul-bonded weapon,” Nekya chuckled, and started walking again, “Let’s go in, please. It’s freezing here.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Alex shook his head.. He didn’t feel cold, his hands were sweating!

This was horrible. He could accept if only he had to go unarmed, but even the mercenaries that were supposed to protect him would go unarmed!! They would be a little better than sitting ducks there!

Alex hurried after her. “What do I do with all these stuff!” he murmured.

“Don’t worry about it, you can keep it here. They’ll be perfectly safe.”

“That’s not-”Alex rolled his eyes but stopped midsentence and grunted, “thanks”. Nekya led Alex through the large door and into the villa. Grand paintings hung on the walls and suits of armours were scattered along the wall. He was sure they were enchanted as well but didn’t ask.

A butler greeted them as soon as they entered and politely asked if he could take the coat.

“Oh, that robe looks nice on you. Why didn’t you wear that for your interview yesterday? It looks much better than the plaid shirt you wore anyway,” Nekya commented as he took off his blazer.

Alex looked down at his new enchanted heavy-duty attire. He didn’t feel an ounce of joy from the compliment. But he decided against telling her the truth. “It was at the dry cleaners.”

Nekya chuckled at that, her face lighting up. It was frustratingly endearing how cheerful she was.

“Okay come with me. I have got a gift for you,” Nekya said clapping her hands.

 She led him through the felt archway, with the butler trailing behind them. They entered through another set of mahogany doors into what looked like an arcane laboratory.

“What is this?” he asked in shock.

Alex had seen laboratories before. They were some of the most basic facilities in every established mage towers. In ancient times they were high rising spiral structures. Now there were only a few mages that adopted that style. Modern architecture along with the increased spread of strengthening wards had revolutionized Mage Towers. Now, all that distinguished them from ordinary buildings were the facilities inside!

Alex looked around the marbled laboratory. There were shelves full of scrolls and tables full of colourful liquids in beakers.

“I feel bad asking you to do this. So I got something for you,” Nekya said with a wide grin. She walked forward and picked up a rolled-up scroll on the table. “Is that a bio-rune?” Alex asked in disbelief. He looked at the scroll in her hand. His heart skipped a beat.

Bio-runes were exceedingly exotic runes that were always guarded zealously. Instead of being engraved on objects, they were directly inscribed on the mage’s body.

“It’s not much. Take a look,” she smirked proudly, handing him the scroll.

Alex took the unnervingly ordinary-looking scroll. Although his hands itched to inscribe it. The horror stories of botched bio-runes were too many to ignore. Thankfully, some mages specialized in appraising things now. He slowly extended a strand of mana to the seal on the scroll.

[All-Speech], a single word that appeared in his consciousness along with the details of how It worked.

There didn’t seem to be tampered either. The [All-Speech] rune just translated the speech into the universal runic language so that he could understand and speak in any language.

“It's amazing,” Alex started looking at Nekya.

“Don’t thank me yet. It’s not free,” she smileed. “Okay let’s get it implanted then.”

Alex nodded. He planned to keep his end of the bargain anyway.            

She led him to one of the ‘formation circles’ in the laboratory. Alex walked up the raised platform and sat down with folded legs.

“Okay. What now?” Alex asked.

“Benson,” Nekya called the butler.

The old man with the receding hairline walked forward, rod backed and nodded, “Yes, my Lady.”

The butler, Benson, sat down next to Alex and held the scroll’s seal to the back of his neck.

Alex could sense the butler’s mana surging next to his face but didn’t react. He tried to move but realized he couldn’t. The formation had immobilized him. He tried to stay calm.

“Wha-” he screamed at the sudden pain he felt. A burning wreked him starting from his neck down throughout his body!.

 

***

 

Alex didn’t know how long it was before he regained his consciousness again.

“What happened!” he groaned. He could finally move his limbs and move again. He felt the cold floor on his face and the white light of the laboratory forced him to close his eyes shut.

“Welcome back!” he heard Nekya’s voice. “Everything went without a hitch, congrats!”

Alex touched his nape. The searing pain he felt was completely gone. “Did it work?”

“It’s working. Unless you know how to speak old-Ishra,” she said walking up to his face.

“Really?” Alex asked, his heart pounding. Nobody normal spoke old-Ishra. At least not anything more than a few fancy words.

“Yep, it worked. But be careful okay. You don’t have a very large mana reserve. It’d suck if you died because you kept using the rune all the time” she warned.

Alex nodded. All runes worked by feeding off mana. Even bio-runes would only work by drawing on his mana. He had to make sure he used his bio-mana safely.

“Thanks,” Alex said standing up. He walked up to a concave lens and tried to look at the back of his neck. After a little bit of adjusting, he finally saw it. The rune was two horizontal lines, one shorter than the other.

“I am amazing,” she waved her hand.

“Do you know any other language?” Alex asked scratching his head embarrassed, eager to try more.

He spent another fifteen-minutes in the laboratory practising. The [All-Speech] rune was amazing. He asked Nekya to try speaking in every language he didn’t understand, while he worked on getting into grips with the bio-rune.

The rune wasn’t very mana intensive. Even after using it continuously, Alex didn’t exhaust even a single point in mana. He reckoned that it would take at least six hours of continuous use for him to exhaust all his entire mana pool!

“I didn’t understand a word of what you spoke just now,” Alex said, giving Nekya thumbs up. More importantly, Alex figured out how to activate and disable the [All-Speech] rune. And once he figured how to do, it was impossible to forget!

“Come on. Let’s sign the contract first,” Nekya said, returning the gesture.

Alex followed her out as she led him out of the laboratory to another room to the side. It was comparatively a much smaller room. But much more luxuriously decorated. The room was wooden-floored, a large bookshelf sat on the far corner and a sturdy looking table sat at the centre of the room. Another door to the side exited back into some part of the garden in the estate and large glass windows bathed the room in natural light.

Nekya walked up to the table and slid the papers towards him.  

“I know you’re iffy about soul-contracts. So take as much time as you want,” Nekya said sliding the papers towards him. “Just get it done by today.”

“Thanks,” Alex nodded and grabbed the pages.

Even though Nekya had shown nothing but goodwill on her part all this while, he wasn’t going to sign a soul-contract without reading it through completely. He settled down on the chair and started flipping through the papers.

Everything was what they discussed – he had to try keeping control over the Leypoint for two weeks. If he failed, he wouldn’t be entitled to the bonus of fifty-Leycrals and the Manager Recommendation Token. For her part, Nekya would send a simulacrum to Bambee as a guide and ten mercenaries as a back-up.

“Wait, we agreed on 50-Leycrals. Why does this here say twenty-five?” Alex stopped reading and looked up at Nekya with narrowed eyes.

“What do you mean? I paid you five-Leycrals in advance. And the [All-speech] rune cost twenty Leycrals. Bio-chips are expensive.” she replied with a pout.

Alex looked at him with his mouth agape. He didn’t realize “it’s not free” actually meant he had to pay!

 

***

 

Excerpt from 101 Accidental Inventions.

 

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