Chapter 69 The Fathers Pain* (2/2)

Arita didn't know what to say. How to tell a father that she'd lost his only child due to her negligence? That seemed cruel. Yet there was no other way to say it, so she decided to just get it over with. If worse came to worse, she could fight him off...she hoped.

”He was taken barely a fortnight after we arrived, I don't know where and I haven't seen him since,” Arita admitted.

There was a beat of silence, then the man gave a deep growl of rage as he lifted his sword to slice down at her. Arita reacted in an instant, pulling the light particles around her into the form of a shield to block the sword. The sword reverberated off of it, and Arita kicked her chair away as she stood, backing away.

”There is no call for that!”

”I trusted you with his safety!” Phillip shouted back. He moved quickly. It seemed that knowing his opponent could fight back had given him the will to use the skills he'd long left behind, Arita could do little but dodge and block when she could. There was one point where she felt a cut to her leg, not deep enough to do extreme damage, but it still hurt. She shouted out her pain, then followed it with a desperate explanation. She wasn't a fighter. She'd never been trained. Too reliant on her magic she'd never faced an opponent as apt as Phillip was.

”I swear I didn't intend for it to happen!”

Phillip paused, and Arita took the chance immediately to keep talking.

”Everything was fine, he was eating well and being cooperative, but one morning I woke up after being drugged the night before and he was just gone. There was no trace of him ever being here!” Arita pleaded, ”We couldn't use resources to search for him as it would alert the wider community to our knowledge of him. Knowledge that we knew shouldn't be widespread. He was just a boy after all, no threat to us”.

Phillip clenched his hand that was holding the sword then shouted angrily, pulling his arm back and throwing the sword across the room for it to embed in the wall with a distinct thunk. It wobbled shortly before everything in the room stilled. Arita cautiously looked up at Phillip, silent as he breathed heavily in an attempt to calm his anger.

”Tell me everything that happened,” Phillip replied.

”We suspected they were dark attribute Magicians, though there were no witnesses to affirm. It was like they were ghosts,” Arita said.

Phillip closed his eyes in frustration, then walked over to the wall and pulled his sword out before sheathing it. He went to exit and Arita frowned.

”You don't want to know more?” asked Arita.

Phillip paused and turned to face her, pulling his hood back up again, ”That was enough, I know who took him, now I just have to figure out where”.

”Who took-”

The door to her laboratory slammed shut, and Arita was left in silence.

Perhaps the anger that had fuelled Rassa's killing spree in Cordon was not entirely instinct.