Odine’s most notable feature, at least visually, was the many spires that filled the city. As a symbol of their authority and rank, the mages which held positions high enough to teach and lead others in the study of magic—known as archmages—lived in these tall, ostentatious structures. As such, the spires became a symbol of power and knowledge, and to a degree pride and arrogance, in Odine.
That aside, I had spent five years living in Odine myself, so I had grown quite used to the architecture here. It even felt a bit nostalgic to see the cityscape again. Following the map in my memories, I walked through the streets of the city of magic, looking for the workshop and forge where I had worked with Kawshman. The cityscape had changed a little in the decades I had been gone, but not enough for me to get lost.
But when I arrived at my destination, Kawshman’s workshop was no longer there. For a while, I stood at the spot it should have been, stunned. Of course, I knew full well that Kawshman was long gone, but I had never expected his workshop to disappear along with him. I had assumed one of his students would take up his work and had hoped to speak with them.
As bewildered as I was, I couldn’t just stand in the middle of the street and get in everyone’s way. With a small word to chastise myself, I set about finding a place to stay.
Ah, okay. I must have instinctively assumed I’d be staying at Kawshman’s place, and so hadn’t bothered to find an inn before looking for it. I knew that Kawshman was gone, but the foolish notion that I had a place to stay had lingered in the back of my mind.
“Well, that’s a problem,” I murmured to myself. While Nonna’s inn had certainly undergone a significant change, it was at least in the same place. That had been encouraging to me, but this was a much harder experience.
I had one idea on how I might find Kawshman’s legacy. If I went to the city hall, I might be able to find out what had happened to him, and where his students were now. I had once been his student, so I was officially recognized as a mage in Odine.
Kawshman’s workshop had been inherited from a dwarf named Rajudor. What would I even say to his students now, who had failed to preserve such an important place? But even so, I wanted to know how far he had managed to go before he died. We had exchanged letters a few times, so I had a rough idea of where he had been headed, but I still didn’t know if he had reached his goal.
He was my teacher of magic, my student in blacksmithing, and my rival. I wanted to at least leave a mark of his life in my memories.
I spent the night in Odine and headed to the city hall the next morning. After introducing myself and proving my identity, one of the staff answered my query.
“Information regarding Archmage Kawshman Feedel is confidential, so I cannot answer your request. My apologies, but I will have to ask you to leave immediately.”
It appeared at first to be an exceptionally cold response, but that wasn’t actually the case. At the same time the staff member delivered that harsh rejection, he quickly scrawled a note on the paper between us where no one else could see.
Ah, so that’s what had happened. I now understood why Kawshman’s workshop was gone. The clerk’s demand I leave immediately held a deeper meaning as well. It wasn’t a demand to leave the city hall, it was a warning to get out of Odine as soon as possible.
The military had made Kawshman’s research classified. It was only natural that they wouldn’t tell anything about that research to a traveler like me, even if I was once Kawshman’s student. I doubted the city hall itself knew much of anything about it either.
There were signs of it back then too, but it seemed the military had taken a strong interest in Kawshman’s research. Relics were not particularly versatile and could be quite unwieldy, but they made the process of using magic much more stable. On top of that, if you could produce and manipulate mana, you could use them even without the voluminous knowledge required to become a full-fledged mage, making them capable of drastically reducing the barrier of entry for using magic.
Now that I thought about it, maybe that had played a role in how mages had looked down on the use of relics back then, as it devalued their hard work. But a stable source of magic was all too tempting for the military, always in search of more power. Enough so that they hid their existence, monopolized their production, and went through great pains to prevent information about them from leaking out of Odine and the Alliance.
I couldn’t just casually waltz in and announce myself as Kawshman’s first student. Would they try and take me captive in hopes of furthering their research into the production of relics? Or would they send assassins after me to keep the knowledge I held from leaking out of the city? In either case, the result would be bad for me. This clerk seemed to think so, at the very least, as he had been willing to violate his orders to warn me to escape the city.
If the military found out he had done so, he would inevitably be punished. But he had likely found the prospect of a student being captured or killed for the crime of asking about their old master to be unconscionable. Alternatively, he might have had some obligation to report any students of Kawshman that appeared at city hall asking after him, and felt inclined to shirk that duty.
Thinking back on it now, my last visit to Odine’s city hall had brought with it an encounter with a very kind clerk. These two experiences made me quite grateful for the people working there, and apologetic for the danger I might have unintentionally brought on them. Though it wasn’t my intention at all, I could understand why the military would respond in that way. In peacetime, it might have been another matter, but the Alliance was currently dealing with the birth of an aggressive new kingdom in Zieden to the west and an invasion from Darottei in the north. It was only natural they would want to monopolize any military advantage they might get their hands on, and be wary of any threat of that advantage leaking to enemy states.
I supposed I had no choice but to leave Odine. The fact that the military felt the need to conceal his research meant he must have had considerable success in his endeavors. I would have to be satisfied with that discovery for now. If at all possible, I would like to at least retrieve the flaming sword Kawshman had made, but with no clues as to where it was now, it wasn’t really feasible. I had been looking forward to seeing how excited Kawshman’s students would be when I shared with them knowledge of the expendable relics used in the East, but I had no interest in such an exchange with the military. Rather, I was even willing to become their enemy if I could retrieve that sword.
However, crushing Odine’s military would have a profound impact on the Alliance as a whole. It wasn’t unreasonable to think doing something like that could lead to the downfall of Janpemon. I couldn’t take the easy road here. At least not yet.
I collected my things from the inn and left Odine immediately. Expecting pursuers to follow, I headed west. When leaving Odine, one would normally head south to take a ship from Lake Tsia. Most of the pursuers would no doubt head in that direction, as once I boarded a ship, it would be quite difficult for them to catch me.
However, if they knew I was an elf, they might be able to find me even if I headed west. If they did, I wouldn’t hesitate to meet them head-on. Beating up a small force like that would help me vent my frustrations without having a significant impact on the military’s overall strength.
It seemed I really had grown quite sentimental.