"Hmm...let's see what an eyewitness has to say..." muttered Will, making his way over to the collapsed building, stopping near it to close his eyes, lower his head, and bring his hands together in prayer, his voice humming as he incanted, "The Wheel of Time turns, but the marks left upon it linger eternally. Gaze upon them and let the Past be Present once more..."
Finished with his chant, Will opened his eyes, his irises reflecting the graduations of a clock with the hour, minute, and second hands spinning rapidly in reverse. At the same time, the building around him replayed its collapse in reverse, enshrouded in hazy green energy. The haze lingered even after the build was whole again, but as could be deduced from the shimmering green ruptures adorning various surfaces, it hadn't truly been restored.
"Mmm...that probably wasn't the best use of my limited Mana..." remarked Will, a sardonic smile adorning his face as he entered the building, a fairly high-end tavern, and stepped past a dozen or so mangled corpses on his way to the kitchen or, more accurately, the double-doored wooden hatch leading to the wine cellar. The Spell he had used might have been a pale imitation, but it was still a Sixth-Circle Magic: Remembrance. As such, his reserves had tanked considerably despite using the least amount of Mana to replicate its effects.
Placing his right palm against the cellar doors, which were unsurprisingly locked from the inside, Will slowly increased the amount of force he was using until the boards comprising the hatch and the one bracing it began to bend, producing creaking and faint snapping sounds before the tension reached a critical level, causing an explosive pop as the brace burst forth from the banded metal keeping it in place.
With the brace removed, Will was able to open the cellar freely, his voice calm and producing a faint resonance as he called out, "I've come to help. I would appreciate it if you didn't attack or try to trip me as I enter..."
Though there was no response, Will could sense at least three presences within the cellar: one hiding behind a support brace, another lurking under the stairs, and a third, presumably a small child, concealed within a barrel.
"Fair warning, but I'm a Third-Grade Practitioner..." revealed Will. "I won't be too upset if you attempt to stab my ankles, but it will make things more awkward than they need to be..."
Following his words, Will began descending the steps, giving the person beneath the stairs a chance to consider their options by taking each step slowly and methodically. Something sharp grazed the tendons at the back of his ankles when he was roughly halfway down, but since there wasn't a drop of Aura within its edge, it didn't even leave a mark.
"That's fair. It's better to be safe than sorry," said Will, completing his descent and meeting the gazes of a young man and a similarly youthful woman in their mid to late teens, the former wearing clothes that made him seem like a cook and the latter dressed rather scantily, looking a bit like the dancers he had seen previously. Both had dark brown hair and bronzed skin, but the woman's extended to her hips and was curly, fixed into a long, multi-segmented ponytail.
Piecing things together, Will suspected the duo had been having a secret rendezvous when the attack above occurred. Just to be certain, however, he asked, "Do the two of you work in this establishment...?"
"We do..." confirmed the male, clearly nervous but doing his best to put on a brave front as he wielded a large dismantling knife in his right hand, the hooked kind used to cut open and disassemble large game.
"You...you're not from around here..." said the man, his voice and hand trembling as he held up the dismantling knife, prompting the woman to hastily grab his left arm and point out, "Kahil, no! Look closely! He is not wearing a mask, and his clothes are those of our people!"
"But, Xerava, my love! He could have simply removed them!" protested the youth, Kahil, simultaneously giving credibility to the hypothesis Will had formed when he first saw them.
Raising his hands, palms facing outward, Will stated, "Look, if I wanted to harm you, we wouldn't be speaking like this. So you can keep waving your knife around, but answer my questions while you do. Did either of you see what happened? Since your friend mentioned people in masks and foreign clothing, I assume so."
"We—we saw and heard nothing! Now, go! Yai'tah...!" exclaimed Kahil, taking a half-step forward and making a swiping gesture with his knife, ostensibly hoping to righten or scare off Will, but the latter just stared at him without so much as flinching.
Shifting his gaze to the woman, Xerava, Will asked, "Do you mind reining in your friend before he does something incredibly foolish?"
Grabbing and pulling Kahil back, Xerava, panicked and noticeably afraid, hurriedly responded, "Please forgive him, Serva! His family was lost, so he is not in his right mind...!"
"Then, for now, take a short rest..." said Will, the word rest barely uttered but resounding in the couple's ears as he made a casual swiping gesture with his right hand, causing their eyes to roll back, their eyelids to flutter, and bodies to go slack. Fortunately, they weren't the only two people he could question.
"You can come out," said Will, his tone controlled as he shifted his gaze to one of the many barrels lining the cellar wall. There was nothing different about it at a glance, but after several seconds, the top opened like a door, revealing a small girl with bronzed skin and dark brown hair fixed into four spiky tufts. More notably, she had a collar around her neck, large, cat-like ears atop her head, and a long, thick, and visibly damaged tail.
'Another Sendala Sidhe...how convenient...' thought Will, feeling slightly indebted to the cat-like humanoids after the hospitality they showed him after his forced transfer. He also disdained the notion of slavery, so if the opportunity presented, he tended to free those he could.
Looking between Will and the duo on the ground, the Sidhe's ears, one of which had been clipped, twitched, the pupils of her eyes dilating like a cat that had just spotted a mouse.
"Did these people harm you?" asked Will, his expression a nearly flawless mask of neutrality.
Startling slightly at the sound of Will's voice, the Sidhe returned her gaze to him, visibly trembling as she held her hands up to her chest, flattened her ears, and tellingly responded, "They have been kinder than most..." in nearly fluent Common. The age of a Sidhe was difficult to determine at a glance due to their quick maturation and short lifespans, but her ability to speak Astralian Common as if it were her native tongue indicated she had been enslaved for some time.
"Mmm...well, I will not stop you if you wish to seek revenge," said Will, shrugging. "But, before that, were you privy to what happened above?"
Tilting her head confusedly to the side, the Sidhe asked, "How could I hope for something like revenge?" before shaking her head and adding, "And yes, I saw what happened. A man wearing a smiling mask entered the tavern in a black hood and cloak. Everyone could tell he was a bad man the moment he arrived, so one of our regulars led several others to attack. But their attacks didn't work. They passed right through the man while he laughed and laughed..."
"That sounds remarkably similar to a Saighba'an..." Will noted, causing the Sidhe to nod and assert, "Someone else pointed that out, but I didn't hear anyone respond to them. My Master...that one(pointing to Kahil)...dragged me and his mate into the cellar. The three of us hid in the barrel until just a short while ago..."
"Anything else...?" asked Will, his tone casual, but for reasons he could only imagine, they caused the Sidhe to twitch, her trembling intensifying and her eyes swimming around in their sockets as if she were looking for the words to satisfy his query.
"Relax," said Will, making a come-hither gesture with his right hand as he added, "I came here to help, not arbitrarily harm people."
Fearing the consequences of her refusal, the Sidhe approached Will, the top of her head barely reaching his breadbasket as he carefully traced his right index finger along the base of the metal, leather-lined collar around her neck. Removing the slave crest branded below her collarbone would be difficult with his current Mana and Aura reserves, but it only took a few seconds for a faint clicking sound to emanate from the collar, the result of its latches being undone.
"Eh...?"
Feeling her collar loosen and seeing Will casually remove it from her neck with both hands, undisguised confusion marred the Sidhe's face. She was even more confused when he pulled out a tiny vial of bright red liquid that shimmered and swirled as if mixed with gold dust. Not because she didn't know what it was, but because its value was more than all the money her various Masters had spent to acquire her combined...
"Drink," said Will, his expression calm but voice firm as he added, "Even if you aren't a child, your disheveled appearance bothers me..."
"I...I can't accept such a precious thing..." responded the Sidhe, turning her attention to the unconscious Kahil as she explained, "Master...he has forbidden me to accept charity from others..."
"Mmm...is that so...?" asked Will, causing the Sidhe to startle but react much too slowly as he abruptly extended his left hand, grasping her head and pressing his thumb to the center of her forehead, causing her eyes to become unfocused as he brought the vial to her lips, tilted her head back, and emptied its contents into her throat. He had temporarily blocked her consciousness by sending a thread of Aura into the median between her cerebral cortex, but her motor functions were uninhibited, allowing her to swallow instinctively.
Removing his thumb from the Sidhe's head and releasing her, causing her to pull away from him and trip onto her butt, Will placed the vial back into Inventory as he stated, "What I just did wasn't charity; it was self-serving magnanimity. You don't need to thank me, and we have no debts between us..."
As the energy of the potion filled her body, causing her blood to feel as if it were boiling, the Sidhe hunched over, trembling and unable to respond as Will observed what came next with an impassive gaze. Her tanned skin gained a notably red hue and soon after glistened with sweat, producing several threads of steam that rose from her body and caused a noticeable hike in the surrounding temperature. Most people would have given in and screamed bloody murder at that point, but the Sidhe weathered it without so much as a peep, her trembling intensifying but her expression resolute as the tip of her ear regenerated, the scars across her body vanished, and the bald patches on her tail disappeared. The hair on her head also grew rapidly, causing her pigtails to become more like loose ponytails, but while that was the most noticeable change, it wasn't the most important.
Pulling out one of his spadroons, Will stabbed it into the ground before the Sidhe, compelling her to gaze at it before straining to look up at him as he stated, "Freedom isn't something that's granted...it's something you fight tooth and nail to preserve..."
Feeling that his debt had been sufficiently repaid, Will turned and left the cellar without another word. The odds of the Sidhe choosing to remain a slave or falling back into it were high, but since he had his own matters to attend and knew the folly of picking up strays, the only person who could guarantee her freedom was the Sidhe herself. By healing her wounds and interfering with her Slave Crest to prevent it from stopping her heart if she chose to murder her Master, he had already done more than most in her position could hope for...
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(A/N: Sorry for the lack of chapters. I've been busy with real-world stuff and a bout of depression due to my father's death. For those who are wondering where Springtime Shinobi disappeared, I deleted it because it was getting mass-reported by trolls, and I didn't feel like dealing with the drama. If you want to continue it, I tend to publish side-projects for free on my Patreon. Just look up Eins_left_foot. And if you enjoy it, all of my other content is typically accessible via the lowest Patreon tier.)