Prisoner of War Chapter 4: Final Spell

Chapter 4: Final Spell

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: UA

Felix heard an alarm go off in his head. He quickly recited a spell and reached for Sean. His palm overflowed with hot power, which did not hurt Sean’s hand, but instantly burned the letter paper and envelope to ashes.

The letter is destroyed, but the spell attached to the letter was already working. Sean was frozen in place, not even blinking his eyes, as if he had become a statue. Felix used several different detection spells and tried various ways to remove the curse. A few minutes later, his efforts had no effect at all.

There was a trigger spell on the letter, as well as the breath of the undead spell. Felix blamed himself when he saw the blank stationery. He noticed it too late!

Suddenly, Sean’s eyes moved, his eyelashes trembled, and his eyelids closed and opened again.

“Lord Duke?” Felix shakes his finger in front of his face, but Sean grabs his hand.

“Felix, come here.” Sean drags him deeper into the garden. Felix’s hand was caught in a very uncomfortable position and couldn’t break free.

“Lord Duke, are you all right?” Felix looks at him. He didn’t know what the effect was on Lord Sean.

Sean shoves him into the bush, and the rough, sharp branches scratch Felix’s neck and palms. He falls to the ground and wants to get up and run away, but Sean puts his foot on his waist, pulls out his sword, and stabs him through his right hand, which was on the ground.

While doing this, Sean holds Felix’s nose and mouth firmly with his other hand. The mage’s scream was completely covered up by the singing, dancing, and laughing at the manor banquet. Then Sean pulls out the dagger from his boot and puts it against Felix’s neck, “Babe, hold on. If you yell or chant, I’ll cut your throat.”

Felix gasps from the pain, “Ian? Ian Rand?”

The knight smiles and brushes his hand over Felix’s lips, “It’s me,” he confesses. “You are my most loyal friend, and you recognized me at once.”

As soon as he had finished speaking, he writhed as if he had been hit by something, his body was paralyzed and tingling, and the dagger fell to Felix’s side.

No matter who he is, Ian or Sean, who is confused by magic, he didn’t know mages well enough. Mages usually have to recite a spell to cast a spell, but others can do it silently. This is very difficult to do and will damage the effect of the spell, if not in extreme cases, mages will not use this easily. Felix’s small magic spell could only help him temporarily retreat from the enemy, and would not last long. He must break free as soon as possible. However, the knight was still on his body, and his right hand was pierced by a long sword. A little movement made his whole body go soft.

At this point, the knight, who should not have reacted, began to speak, “Felix? Are you still alive?”

Sean’s body was bound, face-up, and his voice was a little strange. Felix can’t tell who it was this time.

“Answer me, Felix, are you Felix?” The knight’s voice urged, “We have limited time. Thanks to your casting on this body and distracting Ian Rand’s soul, I was able to take control. Duke Sean is in danger. You have to save him.”

Felix finally recognized the familiar accent, “My God! Jerlin! Are you Jerlin?”

How many souls were there in Sean’s body? If it wasn’t for the pain, Felix would like to ask if they thought the Knight was a hostel.

“Mn, I’m Jerlin. Long time no see, Felix.”

“You’re still alive, Jerlin? You didn’t really die in prison…”

“Let’s leave it for the future. Now, pay attention to me. Lord Rand left behind a writ with trigger magic and ‘soul stab wedge.’ This is a very terrible type of necromancy. It controls not the body of the dead, but the souls of the dead and the living. Lord Rand coerced me to cast a spell for him. If he died of defeat, the letter would be handed to you, he wanted to enter your body… I’m sorry, Felix. If I didn’t do it, he was going to torture Anya, and I had to give in.”

Felix shook his head and saw that Sean’s head was not up. Jerlin can’t see. “I did a little bit of trickery when casting, so that once Lord Rand succeeded, I could get into his new consciousness and gain a little bit of control. Now the knight, Duke Sean, Felix, he is under attack. If you want to save him, do as I say.”

“Mn, you tell me what to do.”

“First of all, keep physical contact with the body, look him in the eye, cast the most basic detection magic on him, and stay focused, don’t stop. I’ll take this opportunity to pull your consciousness in. You need to go deep into Duke Sean’s consciousness and help him break away from the ‘soul stab wedge.’”

“Okay.”

“Felix, after you come in, I have to use all my energy to control this body. Don’t move. Otherwise, if I lose control, the body will be manipulated again by Lord Rand, or it will behave disorderly from being pushed by multiple souls, which will lead to unnecessary misunderstanding. So you have to save Duke Sean on your own.”

“No problem. I’ve learned the basics of going into the conscious world.” It’s a pity that Felix didn’t study this field. What he knows is only basic knowledge, and he has never practiced it. He put his uninjured hand around Sean’s neck and made him look down at himself. After their eyes met, he began to chant.

After a while, Felix’s eyes began to lose focus and his arm dropped. He had to keep in touch, so he held Sean’s wrist tightly.

His field of vision was briefly dark, then lit up again. Overhead was the night sky with twinkling stars. By the feet was the stone floor of the manor. Not far away, several candlesticks flickered with orange fire. It seemed that everything was as usual, but it was quite different. Now Felix’s hand has not been hurt, nor has he fallen. He was standing deep in the garden, which was very quiet and empty.

He was pulled in by Jerlin. After entering someone’s soul, they usually come to the place where they were before they lost consciousness. In the conscious world, Felix couldn’t communicate with Jerlin anymore. Jerlin has to use all his energy to control the knight’s body, so he’s not here.

Felix walked down the garden veranda and saw his broken glass. This was obviously a virtual image of consciousness because there was no wine on the ground nearby. There were no banquets in the manor, the door was open, and it was not the holy walls and streets outside, but wilderness. In other words, it was an ancient battlefield. As Felix walked out of the gate, the manor behind him disappeared. In front of him, there were old ruts covered with weeds, broken swords and shields on the ground, and bloody battle flags were planted on the hills in the distance.

A man’s conscious world is his memory and experience. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. Felix recalled the experience in the book: if you are a mage and want to find the subject’s consciousness, then you can actively evoke the memory shared by both. The mage can use this behavior as a magnet to bring the subject’s consciousness closer to you. If your common memory is vivid enough, you can get twice the result with half the effort. If the mage and the subject do not share a common memory, all this will become extremely difficult. Thinking of this experience, Felix also remembered his shared memories with Sean. The problem was, what left him the most impression was not having breakfast together or attending an occasional meeting, but the interrogation room in the Acropolis dungeon. He certainly didn’t want to recall this, but it’s hard to resist instinct.

Looking back, Felix lay in a cell covered with straw. It was dark, there were no windows, and the only connection to the outside world was the air vent at the top of the cell. The candles were dim outside, and groans of pain could be faintly heard from other cells.

The injury on his right knee was still not healed and he couldn’t walk on his own. The Knight sent medical officers to do debridement and sutures for him. They treated him as if he was an ordinary patient. They also regularly sent him medicine to prevent the wound from becoming infected. At the same time, they were not soft-hearted in terms of interrogation and detention.

Felix tried to tell himself that this is the world of consciousness, it wasn’t real, it all happened in the past. But the wound on his leg was so painful that he couldn’t ignore it. He tried to calm himself and contain his fear. He has to find Sean. Maybe when he sees Sean, these images will disappear. He was thinking this when someone opened the door of the cell. Two soldiers came in, picked him up, and took him to the corner at the end of the cell.

Felix recalled the place clearly: the torture room, the scene he was most afraid of in his nightmares. He knew what was going to happen next. First of all, there will be a civil servant like man to read his deeds. As expected, the voice of the civil servant began to ring. What’s more, he was about to face the fifteen beatings at the beginning of his imprisonment, which was not in the course of the later interrogations. This time, it was only punishment for him, not a confession.

Did he meet Sean when he took the fifteen lashes? He couldn’t remember that since he was so frightened and angry, he had resisted pointlessly in the hands of the soldiers. He was in too much pain and afraid, and finally almost fainted, so he didn’t notice anyone around him.

Felix closed his eyes, trying to focus on cutting off the scene, but failed several times. He understood why: because he wasn’t calm enough. His attention was seized by terrible memories, and the more he called out to himself  to “not think”, the more he thought.

He was tied to the scaffold with his hands handcuffed above. The whip tore the thin shirt, and the back seemed to burn. Several times he wanted to cast a spell to fight back. Of course, this was impossible. When he was arrested, he had already used up all the magic he had prepared, and the soldiers searched him for everything related to casting. It’s the same in the conscious world. He couldn’t cast back then, and he can’t do it now.

Suddenly, a little light appeared in the almost completely dark world. He heard a voice outside, “You must remember not to hurt his hand, he is a mage.”

The soldier asked, “Can he still be one in the future?”

“Who knows? He is still young and has other ways to go in the future. Of course, before that, he has to take the punishment he deserves. We should try not to leave him disabled.”

“He seems to have fainted. These mages are very weak.”

“It’s normal. Have you ever been whipped? This is not what ordinary people can bear. Call the medical officer. I’ll come back tomorrow, and I’ll interrogate him myself.”

It’s Sean’s voice. Sean was out there, but he didn’t come in.

Felix didn’t know whether he could change the layout of his memory in the conscious world. Before he had time to think about it, he yelled with all his strength. The name was not Lord Duke, it was Sean.

Sean heard that, but he didn’t understand why. He remembered that he had just come back from the battlefield and was learning about a mage prisoner with the prison guards. Why did the prisoner know his name?

He walked into the torture room and saw the figure with his back handcuffed on the scaffold. The man’s back trembled slightly with the wounds. His hair was wet with sweat and some places were stained with blood. Sean still couldn’t remember who it was until he went to the front of the prisoner and lifted his hair.

“Felix?”

As soon as the mage’s name was called out, the scaffold, shackles, and rope disappeared. Felix falls out of thin air and Sean catches him. He’s in shock, his tattered shirt turned back into a robe, and the wounds on his back and legs were no longer painful. They finally left the dungeon.

Sean hugs him. This is his most hated “excessive physical contact”, but now he does not repel it, there was no fear, there was no instinctive discomfort, he felt that this time he was safer than ever.

They stood on a silent field. In the distance, the gate of Acropolis can be seen vaguely, like a mirage that is hard to distinguish from false. Sean was a little confused. He put his arms around Felix’s shoulder, pulled out his sword in the other hand, and looked around. Felix called to him several times, but he didn’t respond. So, the mage learned the movements he used to do and snapped his fingers in front of him.

“Felix?” Sean’s attention finally returned.

Felix explained the situation briefly. Sean could only get a general idea about the world of consciousness, soul magic, and so on. He was willing to believe in Felix and listen to Felix’s arrangement to act.

The mage pointed to the distant building, “We have to go that way, go to Acropolis and find the letter.”

“Letter? Oh, yes, it seems that there was such a letter that Lord Rand left you…”

“In the real world, you were attacked by the spell in that letter, and you’ve got a spell called ‘soul stab wedge’. Usually, this spell can only be dispelled by the caster himself, but we have other ways. We have to find the key item in your soul to trigger the spell, that is, the letter. We can start here and find a way to get rid of it.”

“That’s too hard. What was that letter like? I don’t even remember. What if we can’t find it? Is there no other way?”

“There are other ways, but it’s difficult,” Felix said. “That would be finding Lord Rand’s soul and destroying him.”

The Knight stretched his muscles and bones and held his sword again, “I think the latter way is simpler.”

“How is that easier?”

“You see?”

Following Sean’s finger, Felix sees an army moving toward them. The farmland disappeared and the environment became the original battlefield. In the distance, the army held high the flag of Rand territory, a row of heavy armor knights leveled the spears, among which were several familiar figures. In the war two years ago, he stood in the chariot behind those people, preparing magic to protect them.

Felix looked back. At some time, Sean actually rode on a black horse. His noble clothes turned into silver and white body armor. On his chest was the unique borage crest of a knight, a symbol of wisdom and courage. Behind him, there was the same King Capital knight as him, as well as the Archer’s array, sword and shield soldiers and the knife and ax infantry. Felix found himself in the chariot again, speechless.

Sean’s voice sounded to his side, “Felix, you’re no longer Lord Rand’s pawn. You’re my friend. This time, be my mage and fight beside me.”

Horses charging, hooves rolling like thunder, knights like silver lightning, tearing the illusion of the heavy fog. The wind blew on Felix’s robe. He is no longer a child following Ian Rand and sister Anya, a young apprentice who can be fooled at will, or a prisoner in a dungeon.

He’s a combat mage, Felix. He’s good at long-range rays and harassing enemies. If the charge of cavalry is a sword, his magic is an invisible shield, a silent fire.