Henry Palmer, first-class mage and magical incident special investigator of the capital city of Eros. I failed to understand why I had been called out to a small village, but the order had come down straight from the top so I had no choice but to go along with it. With assistant investigator Jo - my apprentice - I travelled south via carriage.
The roads close to the city were well-maintained, flat, and pathed with gravel - making for a pleasant ride. However, within an hour, the path had become rugged and unkept as we got closer to the village. Each bump and rock shook the carriage violently. It was a similar experience to travelling over the decaying cobblestone roads found in the city slums.
As soon as the carriage came to a stop, Jo stumbled out and threw up her breakfast in front of the village entrance. I stepped out, paid the driver, and took a deep breath. The stench of rotten vegetables and animal faeces hit me like a punch to the gut. I pinched my nose, taking out my notebook with my other hand. I flipped to the most recent page, trying to figure out which house we were going to.
"We're at the village entrance... so..."
I gazed around at the shoddy wooden cottages. The thatch roofs looked like they would fly away with naught more than a gentle breeze, let alone be able to protect the interior from rain and snow.
"Well, we'll just keep walking and see if we can spot it."
Jo glanced up, her face grim, and gave me a weak thumbs up.
As we walked, I tried to come up with theories as to why high-class investigators had been called out to a random rural village hours away from the capital.
Perhaps a villainous mage has escaped from prison and has committed a heinous crime beyond imagination against a poor farmer family?
Not likely. What would a mage want with a small run-down village? And even if that was the case, this would have been left to regular incident investigators.
Think, Henry, think.
Black magic? What if someone was practicing black magic out here? Again, not likely, but that would explain the need for special investigators...
In any case, my questions would shortly be answered. We arrived at the end of the main street, in front of a small grassy hill with a dirt path leading up to a lone wooden cottage. I double-checked my notebook, and this was indeed the correct house.
The house looked suspiciously normal. There was no external evidence of any sort of crime - which would definitely not be the case if someone had practiced black magic here. Those kinds of spells are highly-reactive and leave a lake of trace mana particles swimming in the atmosphere. There hadn't been any kind of magic practiced around the cottage, let alone black magic.
"Wait."
I put my arm in front of Jo, halting her in her tracks. We were halfway up the hill now, and I had detected something rather unusual.
I stretched out my arm in front of me, and aimed my palm towards the house. Mana particles gathered at my fingertips, emanating a warm blue light. I closed my eyes and focused on the disturbance.
Densely-packed mana particles were forming a perception barrier all around the hill, warping onlookers' senses to alter their processing of visual and auditory information.
"But that just... doesn't make any sense..."
As a first-class mage, I should have been able to detect such a barrier from the moment we stepped inside the village. And yet, here I stood, inches away - barely able to detect the existence of the barrier let alone dispel it or peer inside.
"What is it?" Jo whispered in a concerned voice while scanning the hill.
"I... don't know. To cast a perception barrier capable of fooling first-class mages... such a feat should be impossible." I attempted to analyse the formation of mana towering in front of me, but the particles had been intricately weaved in complex patterns I didn't recognise. This simply defied all reason.
"There's a barrier here?"
Jo hadn't sensed it at all, despite standing mere inches away. While her specialty wasn't exactly the detection and classification of spells, to fool not one but two first-class mages simultaneously was an unprecedented feat.
It would take the collaboration of the greatest spell weavers in the investigation force to conceive such a thing - and even then, the raw amount of mana and skill required to pull it off... it's unthinkable.