A few seconds passed with her eyes closed. She did what he said on repeat; then, after a while, she stretched out her hand, her eyes still closed. Raze watched as a flame ignited in her hand and looked like it was about to form into an arrow, but then it dissipated.
She scrunched her face after that, eyes still closed. She tried again, trying to cast the spell, but the same thing happened over and over again.
At one point, Raze thought it might be impossible for her to do this, but after a few hours she shocked him: an arrow formed and shot from her hands.
It wasn’t as powerful as a regular one, but it was definitely a flame arrow. She managed to cast it without a spell. She was a genuine talent; that was for certain.
Her eyes snapped open when she realized that she had done it. She looked at him with wide eyes; the happiness on her face said it all.
"I did it," she said.
"Well technically, you can’t use it for anything now , maybe after you practice," Raze said.
But her mind wasn’t there one bit. She was ecstatic that she had managed to cast magic without a spell. She looked at Raze with a shining gaze.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" he asked skeptically, brows raised.
"Well, your method worked, and in just a few hours of learning from you, if I follow you and do what you say, I’m sure that I’ll be able to become a great mage," she spoke enthusiastically, and then grabbed his hands. She looked him right in the eyes with puppy eyes.
"So you’ll teach me, right? You’ll be my teacher," she said.
"Wait, what? I agreed to assist you learn the concept of wordless casting, not to become your teacher, that wasn’t the plan. You are just senior in magic; you’ve done it for far longer and you are also in the academy already.
If anything, I should be learning from you and not the other way around," he said, retracting his hands from her.
She gave him a look that said he was talking crap. "You and I know that when it comes to knowledge, you surely surpass me; you are literally fixing your entire town," she said.
"Oh, talking of fixing the town, we should get going. The people are probably there already; we will talk about this whole student-and-teacher thing later," Raze said. She knew he was going now to avoid answering her, but she had no choice.
Raze found Elaine and then they headed into town again. As they passed through the streets, everyone that saw them greeted them, their faces covered with smiles.
The bathhouse had been a major change, and it helped their moods and their lives in general. Raze was also shocked as the people respected the bathhouse; they did their best to protect it and make sure it stayed working. Content orıginally comes from novᴇlfire.net
But nothing was ever perfect, and there were always issues with things.
"Young master, young master," a man called out to Raze. He was average height, young, and with a slim build.
Raze looked at the man, then walked toward him. "What’s the issue?" he asked.
The man gave a quick and respectful bow, raised his head, and then spoke.
"Young master, yesterday evening, whilst some of the women of the town tried to bathe at the bathhouse, three men were caught peeking into it, wanting to watch them naked.
Luckily, one of the town’s men was to carry out maintenance and ensure the bathhouse was still okay. He spotted the peepers and immediately raised an alarm," the man explained.
’Peepers? I see, so we have those type of people in this town.’
Raze gave a frown, trying to show his dissatisfaction with the issue. "Where are they?" he asked.
"They are tied up at the town center. We wanted to send word to the Baron, but the bathhouse belongs to the young master, so we came to you first," the man explained.
"I see, then please let’s head there," Raze said. The man nodded and led the way.
"Disgusting creatures leering at women’s bodies, tsk," Ella clicked her tongue in disdain as they walked. Raze could see in her eyes that she hated those men even though she was yet to meet them.
Elaine, on the other hand, kept quiet, so Raze decided to ask. "What do you think about this?"
She looked at him, a bit of confusion; then she responded, "Men that can’t hide their perverted desires should be castrated and have it fed to them." Her voice was calm like an ocean, but he could hear a distinct hatred behind those words.
"That’s a lot actually. It’s not a bad punishment, but a lot, and normally I’d say let’s do that. But I have another way," he said, his evil smile forming.
Elaine and Ella looked at the smile and they knew that he was planning something exceedingly sinister.
"Please, whatever you do, young master, remember they are human," Elaine said.
"What? You just asked me to castrate them, and now you are worried they are human?" he asked, looking at her.
"I fear that whatever you will do will be far worse than that," she said.
"Am I really that evil?" he asked.
"Well, young master, there is as much evil as there is good in you. Your good counteracts the evil, long work hours, but lots of benefits and rest at the end; that’s an example.
But I believe only your evil will have a play in what you do with these men. Rest their soul," she said, her voice sounding like she was giving a prayer for them.
Raze was completely stunned on what to say. He just gave a sigh and kept walking. Finally they arrived at the square where three men knelt, hands tied behind their backs.
Raze looked at them, their clothes torn and their bodies bruised. He cracked a smile that went ear to ear, and when the three men saw it, they shivered.