To see if he was even alive.
But what would I say?
Oh, hey, Jin. How’s that shrapnel in your chest doing?
My hands had balled into fists without my conscious knowledge.
No, I wasn’t ready to look for Jin just yet.
I told myself it was because Sera was my priority right now, but I was aware I was deflecting. That was fine, though. The lie was sweeter than the truth, but the truth was sufficient reason to stay away in itself.
We’d nearly killed each other. The next time I saw him, I knew he might try to finish what he’d started.
I doubted it, but that doubt itched at the back of my mind, and I knew it would continue to until I found a way to expunge it. That was, like dealing with any fear, a substantial task: and one I wasn’t particularly adept at.
I made it to my own door without being ambushed by assassins.
I admit it was kind of a let-down. I would have felt vindicated if there had been assassins, and maybe it would have distracted me from thinking about Jin.
Probably not. In retrospect, assassins reminded me of the first time he’d saved me.
Resh.
Okay, clearing mind, focusing on work.
I opened my door.
I didn’t have a perfect memory, and it had been a while since I’d been back to my room, but I was pretty certain it was not how I’d left it.
It didn’t look like someone had sacked the room.
But there were little things that were out of place.
The books on my desk were on the left side, not the upper right hand corner where I usually put them.
My clothes were folded too well. Honestly, I was awful at folding.
I activated my attunement, scanning the area for magic. I found something faint, glowing subtly under the carpet.
I couldn’t ignore that. I’d just have pay for the damages. I cut away a square of the carpet, finding a set of runes that I most certainly hadn’t put there.
Let’s see…
That’s very similar to the activation rune on my return bell, but with a higher level of sensitivity. Betting it’s for detecting if anyone steps on the area above.
That’s the function rune. It has something having to do with air mana, and it’s tied to the next rune…
Which is something that stores a specific sound.
That’s a targeting rune for setting a destination for a spell effect.
The rest of them are just runes for capacity and recharging the enchantments automatically.
After a moment of consideration, I determined they were a simple signaling enchantment. Something that activated another set of enchantments elsewhere when it detected someone present in the area.
From the level of the range rune, the targeted location could be anywhere in the city. And, unfortunately, I didn’t have any way of tracing where it was going.
Not immediately, at least.
I was reasonably confident that Jin didn’t have a high level Enchanter available, so it probably wasn’t him.
I patched up the carpet, took my school books, and left.
I abandoned the clothes. I didn’t trust that they didn’t have kind of detection enchantments built into them. They weren’t glowing, so it wasn’t likely, but I wasn’t going to take the risk.
School books wouldn’t have the enchantment capacity to handle any serious enchantments. Trials of Judgment had to be made of some kind of special material to be able to handle the magic it was capable of, and I was reasonably confident these books were the same ones I’d left behind. I checked each book with my attunement before packing it away, though, just to be safe.
I also took my few other enchanting supplies: an extra etching rod, clamps for holding the object steady, pens, parchment, and that sort of thing.
After a bit of consideration, I changed my mind about the etching rod and left that one behind. Any enchanted item had a risk of being modified. While I didn’t see any new runes on the rod, the stick that Derek had given me proved that there were ways of hiding enchantments.
After that, I locked my room and headed back to Derek’s place.
I dropped my stuff off there.
“Someone broke into my dorm,” I explained to the others. “Bring me with you if you plan to go back to your own rooms. I’ll check for enchantments.”
Derek looked concerned when he heard the news. “I’ll double-check the security of the mansion. We’re well-protected here, but I’ll take some extra precautions.”
I was glad for that. I also spent a bit of time checking the mansion for anything suspicious myself.
Each room had a standardized set of runes etched into a wall. In a couple specific places, like Derek’s room, there were redundancies for extra protection.
That’s a Citrine-level anti-Divination rune. A pretty standard precaution, and a powerful one.
Hm, I think that’s a teleportation rune linked to a shielding rune.
That would work a little differently from the anti-teleportation runes I use, since it doesn’t block teleportation from being used inside the manor. It just prevents teleportation spells that originate from outside the house from getting in. That makes a lot of sense, since it still allows people inside to escape via teleportation, but it prevents attackers from being able to teleport straight in.
I’ll write this combination down. Might need to use it myself eventually.
This last one is a reinforcement rune for protecting the walls. Kind of easy to forget these are here, since Keras and Derek always end up wrecking the rooftop anyway.
After that, there were sets of capacity and recharge runes for each of the mana types. Nothing out of the ordinary.
All of those enchantments seemed like reasonable precautions, and I didn’t find any rooms that had any extra runes that were out of place.
Considering how powerful some of those enchantments were, as well as the sheer number of them, Derek must have spent a fortune on defending his home. I’d sleep a little easier knowing that.
Who could have broken into my room?
The most likely option was someone connected to Orden and the Whispers. If that was the case, I didn’t think I’d be able to track them.
I looked up the set of runes I’d found on the floor and formulated a plan. I couldn’t act on it immediately, but I had some ideas.
I considered hiring a more powerful Enchanter or Diviner to look into it on my behalf, but I couldn’t afford it.
I also thought about reporting the incident to the school, but after what had happened to Orden, I didn’t really trust the academy’s administrators. Moreover, I didn’t really want to bring anyone else into this whole mess if I could avoid it.
For the moment, I’d just have to watch my back while I looked into other things.