34 One trick to rule them all

Rae looked up, curious about what Myra would teach her. "What trick?"

"You already know that we have to go back to the academy tomorrow and sadly, I can't bring you with me." Myra started to explain and she could already see Rae's face making a worried frown.

"Why not?" – "It's their rules darling, not much I can do about it, unless I want to fight with them and that would cause many other problems. I can only come here during the weekends, and maybe one or two days during the week."

"Now with this trick, you will not be able to come to the academy, but you will be able to talk to me in your mind."

"Even when you are away?" – "Yes even when I am far away. You can tell me about your day, if you need anything and if you behave well, I can even tell you a bedtime story."

"I want to learn the trick"

With the curiosity sparked, it did not take long for the little girl Rae to be busy learning her first simple piece of magic. While communication magic over long distances wasn't easily possible and totally unheard of in Luminos, Myra still had a few ways to do it, even over larger distances.

Rae would not be able to cast the spells required, but it was still feasible to teach her how to trigger the magic.

"Here take this pendant. It will help you with the spell. I also need a drop of your blood to bind it to you." Myra quickly enchanted a simple necklace and after a drop of blood was added it was finally complete. As soon as it was hanging around Rae's neck it seemed to disappear.

"Where did it go?" Rae was rather confused by the disappearing piece of jewelry.

"Don't worry, I turned it into a spirit item. It has a little spirit inside that will let you talk to me whenever you want to. Be nice to the spirit. They might not be able to use the same words to communicate, but they are smart. The little spirit will be your best friend if you treat it well and it can also protect you from harm."

Rae once again touched the skin around her neck, still having a hard time to have an item just disappear and then nodded to Myra.

"You have a big responsibility. You will be our first space mage and you have to make sure to let me know if anything bad happens. While the older kids will look out for you, and the innkeeper should do his best as well, they have no simple way to contact me."

"Will you go away?"

"No darling, I won't, even if you don't manage to become a space mage, I will not leave you. It would make me happy though if you do your best and try, right?"

"Yes!"

--

It was nearly as hard for Myra to leave the girl and return to the academy, as it was for the little girl. Rae seemed like such an adorable kid, Myra really couldn't understand how someone would be able to just walk away from someone so cute.

'What an irresponsible thing to do. Well, I can take care of her now.'

Happy with the progress of all their projects she finally returned to the academy with Aaron and Nell. Liam and Alyn still wanted to go shopping and spend the afternoon and early evening in the city. The carriage was much slower than flying through the sky when she was in the form of 'her sister', but she couldn't just permanently use that kind of power after all, neither could she easily bring others along without getting noticed.

Even without using too much strength she was still strong and she didn't worry too much about the few years more it would take to be able to adapt to her strong spirit completely, but she still missed the time when she could fly without any worries.

'I just have to show more patience.' Myra thought to herself when she thought about flying.

What difference did a decade make in the life of a being who had been sleeping for thousands of years?

When the carriage arrived at an area about halfway to the academy, Myra noticed that something was wrong. "I think there is someone ahead blocking the way." She said to Aaron and Nell, while summoning her polearm.

"Hey Stella, we might get to test out a few new techniques I adapted recently!"

The little spirit was happy it could really use her strength again and with an excited "Aiee!" she hopped out of the weapon and floated next to Myra.

Just when they got ready, Aaron could also sense the people in front of them and shortly the carriage driver called out to them.

"Sirs, Miss, there are bandits blocking the road ahead, I don't think we can outrun them with this carriage, but I will try my best."

"Stop the carriage and take cover, we will deal with this." Aaron spoke in a calm manner and the driver reluctantly stopped.

"Please be careful sir."

There were quite a lot of people in front of them, as well as some hiding in the trees beside the road. Maybe a total of 500 people altogether all dressed in typical mercenary leathers and simple armor.

While the group might be well equipped, it was nothing compared to a regular army.

"Get them, don't forget our orders, don't harm the girl, just capture her." The leader shouted, one of the few people on a horse and the remaining group of people started to surround the carriage.

Aaron, Nell and Myra had already stepped out and inspected their ambushers.

"What shall we do with them?" Myra asked. She didn't exactly see those people as a threat, but they might be able to harm Aaron if they were not careful.

"Ask them to go away and if they don't comply kill them." Aaron's usually gentle and calm demeanour changed completely in front of these bandits. They wanted to rob or harm them, now they had to deal with the consequences of their decision.

"But, can't we just rough them up a little …"

"Myra. Those guys are willing to attack us and maybe kill us without provocation or reason, other than their greed. Do you really think that breaking some of their bones will make them change their ways?"

"Maybe not, but …" she was still reluctant about killing them.

"Just think about what would happen if this was not our carriage that arrived but a carriage of the kids visiting the academy."

Aaron could immediately see the gears turn in Myra's mind, from her expression alone. Doubt turned into worry and then into anger.

"I won't let them harm anyone else. Let's go."

"That's the spirit. Those bandits are not even as good as beasts. At least a beast only attacks to defend its territory or find food. This scum just kills and robs because of their own greed." Nell seemed to fully agree with Aaron.

--

"Drop your weapons and surrender yourself and if I'm in a good mood I might let you survive!" the leader shouted at the three people approaching them.

'Why are those youngsters approaching us? Are they here to beg for their lives? Well that would make this simple.'

Instead of surrendering, Aaron had something completely different in mind.

"Surrender? How about this, I give you 5 minutes to make way and not bother us ever again, if you don't comply we will move you away on our own and make sure you never bother anyone else ever again."

The bandits just laughed and didn't take them seriously. As soon as negotiations, if you want to call the few words that had been exchanged as such, broke off completely and the bandits started to throw nets and ropes at them, trying to catch them alive, the situation suddenly turned upside down for the would be attackers.

The metal nets did not resist even a swing of Nell's twin swords. The edges of those blades just sliced right through the metal alloy as if it were nothing different than simple fibre string.

Whoever tried to get behind Nell or Aaron found themselves at one end of Myra's polearm and since this polearm had a blade on each end, no matter which end these bandits were confronted with, it did not end well for them. A burst of magical power from Stella made the already deadly weapon even more troublesome to avoid.

It did not take long for the bandits to realize that they would fail. Aaron released his strength of a violet magic knight and his sword caused the closest bandits to die, before they could retaliate.

A few of the bandits tried to retreat and get some distance, but most didn't make it. Those who did escape the first few attacks soon fell to the next wave of his onslaught.

Their leader was long dead and none of the horsemen was still sitting on their horse. Myra carefully sniped them with magic, as she didn't want to harm their mounts. She might not give any mercy to these bandits, but that did not mean she would kill the mounts just to prevent the riders to flee.

Altogether, it was a massacre and of the close to 500 bandits only a handful escaped. They would have died as well if the group of youngsters didn't decide that it might be a good thing to let some escape to avoid having similar problems in the future.

Likely once they returned to whatever group they came from, that group would soon move to another location and leave this area alone for the foreseeable time.

No bandit wanted to mess with such a group of people, who would not even be scared about fighting grandmaster level enemies.

"What shall we do with all the dead bodies?" Myra asked with a pale face. In the heat of battle, she did not mind all the blood and death, but now that the fight was over she felt more like throwing up.

Interestingly enough Nell didn't look much better, even though he did not have any moral qualms about killing bandits.

Just Aaron still had his stoic and cold expression, as if he just had a little training spar and did not just kill hundreds of humans.

"Leave them. We can inform the academy, they can send a messenger to the authorities."

When they returned to the carriage, their driver was both happy and scared at the same time. He had seen a few bandit attacks and usually they would either capture and ransom, or they would kill the people they caught.

Driving around three young students who made short work of 500 bandits, was definitely something he did not expect.

At least the remaining way to the academy was peaceful with no further incidents along the way.

"I wonder what they really wanted." Nell seemed to think about the attack. "There are not many travellers on this road other than students and everyone knows that the academy takes good care of their students. If those bandits really captured us, the repercussions for them would have been devastating."

"No bandits in their right mind would start a feud with the academy. Everyone knows that there are three skylords there and it would not take a lot for them to make some bandit groups life hard for them."

"We will probably never find out." Aaron shrugged, but it did not seem like he cared a lot about it. Even if there was more behind it, he was after all just a student, even if a powerful one and not some information broker or torture master.

Asking the bandits what they were up to, would likely not yield any reasonable results for them, so why bother about something that you couldn't influence?