Kane ran ahead of him with a speed Jack couldn't match. Not only was the guardsman more familiar with the castle, leading them through a back hallway Jack hadn't been down before, but he ran with all the fluid grace of a man who often walked around in plate armor and was now unencumbered. Jack, on the other hand, spent most of his time in libraries, and no one ever had to outrun a book. The traditional robes, although more impressive than his leather coat, came down to the top of his boots and tangled around his legs as he ran. Worse yet, the scarf, which normally never bothered him, now hampered his breathing to the point of distraction.

At last they turned a corner and he recognized the corridor he'd escorted Lena through the day before. He slowed his pace, lungs aching. A trio of guards ran out of Sarah's room, heading in different directions - messengers, most likely, carrying orders back to the barracks, fetching the king.

Kane stopped in the doorway, seemingly caught short by what he saw there. Jack scanned the room over the guardsman's shoulder. The large bed at the room's center was disordered, bedding half dragged to the floor. There was no sign of the princess. Near the bed, two guards were busy binding the hands of an unconscious man whose black robes were cut in a similar fashion to the ones Jack wore now.

"Where is the princess?" Kane said.

The younger of the two guards ignored them, focused on the prisoner. The older one looked their way briefly, then returned to his task. He spoke almost dismissively, a man used to giving commands, perhaps a captain. "Carmine, isn't it? See to the girl."

For the first time, Jack noticed the smaller bed in the corner, where Lena wept silently, shivering in a white nightdress. He pushed past Kane to reach her, kneeling in front of her. Tears streaked her face. Her voice was soft, but Kane had moved close beside him. "They took her," she said, obviously struggling to hold back her sobs.

"Shh," Jack said. He grabbed the blanket from the floor behind him and wrapped it around her shoulders. "Breathe," he said.

"Who?" Kane asked. "Who took her?"

"There were three of them," she said. "That man there, and two others. One of them-"

She stopped speaking as the guards behind them muttered angrily. The older one ripped something from the prisoner's prone form and held it up. From his fist dangled an amulet depicting a black sun.

Kane leaped to his feet when he saw it, cursing.

"What is it?" Jack asked.

"Brotherhood," the captain spat.

Jack stood and started to move in for a closer look, but the look in the younger guard's eye stopped him, a look of suspicion and fear. That, and Lena had grabbed the edge of his robes, bunching her fist in the fabric so that he couldn't move more than two steps away from her. She was looking between him and the guard warily - she must have sensed the guard's prejudice toward him. As far as that guard was concerned, Jack was just as guilty as the bound man. He sighed, but squashed his disappointment down, lest Lena should feel that too.

She relaxed her grip when he knelt before her again. He had wondered, while he waited in the courtyard that evening, hearing the noise of the festivities inside the castle, what it must be like to feel the emotions of others as this girl had said she could. How might it have worn him down over the years if he had felt the revulsion of others as keenly as he felt its effects? Would it have helped him understand the guards' fear of him if he could see into their souls and read there the story of why they were afraid?

For that matter, what had Lena seen that had made her so afraid? He turned to raise the question, but when he looked back at her, she was staring at her hands as though she expected them to be doing something. "I can't cast anything!" she said, choking out the words. "Why can't I cast anything?"

He leaned in closer, looking into her eyes, past them to where her power should be, and found her as empty as if she had Cured an entire army after a heated battle. To find out why, though, he would need to use his own magic. He glanced toward the guards. Both were staring at him. There was nothing for it.

"Hold still," he told Lena. He raised his right hand, first two fingers raised, making the sign of the staff, and the aether swirled in response.

This was what made a black mage: not the ability to call on the aether to create spells, but the ability to see it. All life gave off an aura, and a bit of it was left behind wherever they went - all life, forever, going back to the dawn of time. This was the aether, life itself, shifting and flowing from one living thing to another like raindrops on a window, joining and parting and joining again for as long as the sun rose and set.

He opened himself to it, felt it flowing into him. Perhaps he could have completed his task without doing so, and with the guards still staring at him it might have been better to take a more subtle approach, but Lena and Kane were staring at him also, two people who had treated him with more respect these past three days than he had known in the whole of his life before that. For their sakes, he wanted answers.

As the aether pooled within him, he felt the corona form around his eyes. The guards reacted instantly, stepping toward Jack, but Kane came between them.

"What is that black mage doing?" the younger of the two guards demanded, fear tinging his voice.

"I'm reading the aether," Jack told him. His own voice remained calm: the aether demanded total control. "Don't interrupt."

He surveyed the room again, this time through the aether. The princess's aura was everywhere, pale yellow, stronger in those parts of the room where she spent the most time, or around the possessions she used the most: the bed, the chair near the fireplace, the hairbrush on the dressing table. Around the bed in the corner, he detected Lena's aura, a subtle blue shade, but very little of it clung to her. Instead, a wisp of it, like unspooled thread, trailed from her toward the center of the room, as if something had grabbed it and yanked it away. He told her, "I believe you've been the victim of a dark mage. He drew power off of you. It isn't pleasant, but you'll be alright."

She nodded, marginally calmer.

The wispy blue line ended abruptly in a black tangle at the center of the room. That was unusual.

He stood, facing the prisoner, viewing him through the aether, and saw from him a similar thread of aura extending to the black mess. "This man, as well…" he said, frowning.

"What do you mean?" Kane asked.

"I mean his power has been drawn away." Aside from the ethereal thread, though, the prisoner had almost no other aura at all, a sign that he had attempted to cast a spell bigger than his aether reserves could handle. That explained why he was lying there - no one could function when their aether was emptied completely. Unfortunately, there was no way to know what he'd been trying to do. "I can tell he's a black mage, but he has no power left at the moment. You'll need to find a better way to secure him. Those ropes won't hold him when his magic returns."

The older guard, nodded, grudgingly. "How long do we have?"

Jack had no answer for that. He shrugged, considering how long it took him to recover after an exhausting day of spell practice. "Perhaps three hours." That was a conservative estimate; it generally took an entire night's sleep, but three hours may be enough time to work up the energy for a single spell. If the mage was crafty, a single spell would be enough.

The captain turned to the other guard and said, "Send word to the mage council." The young guardsman saluted and ran out the door, the aether swirling behind him like mist.

Kane asked, "Why would they have attacked one of their own?"

"I don't know," said Jack, shaking his head. "If they weren't expecting Lena to be here, if she surprised them, perhaps he got in the way when the others tried to silence her?" It was equally possible the escaped dark mage had simply decided his companion was expendable, stealing his power and leaving him behind. It was puzzling. Jack moved closer to Sarah's bed now, near the darkened spot where the aether pulsed black. He reached his senses toward it, retracting them hastily when he felt a sharp pain.

"Jack?" Lena asked, perhaps sensing his surprise.

"I'm alright," he said. He made another sign with his hand, three fingers raised, thumb and little finger joined, and waved it through the disturbance as though he were pushing it out of the way, like parting a cobweb to see the spider underneath, and there it was: a trace of otherness, a scrap of aether displaced from elsewhere, harmless, but out of place. He turned to Kane. "I can also detect traces of a Teleport spell."

His friend said nothing, but turned and walked stiffly from the room. Jack watched him go, alone now in the room with the captain, the prisoner, and Lena. He released his hold on the aether, letting it dissipate, and sat beside the white mage on the little bed, suddenly conscious of how very late it was.

"Kane's furious," Lena whispered.

"He hides it well," Jack said.

He heard a commotion as more people arrived; the king and Lord Redden entered the room, flanked by two more guards. Lord Redden stopped just inside the door, speaking with Kane in the hall. The king, though, strode the length of the room, stopping when he saw Jack there. Jack fought the urge to avert his eyes, wondering if the guard captain would mention his earlier use of forbidden magic, but then the king turned his attention to the insensate man on the floor, eyes burning with anger.

King Cascius wasn't a tall man, but he was powerfully built, and unlike Kane, he did not hide his anger well. As he inspected the amulet the captain handed him, he shook with barely suppressed rage; Jack imagined him as the warrior he must have been in his youth. The king turned to Lena and barked, "What did you see?"

Jack flinched at his tone, though Lena did not. He supposed she would have sensed his temper, known what was coming. Her voice was raw from her earlier crying but remained steady. "A noise woke me. I saw three men. One was using black magic. He didn't see me. I tried to read him, but…" She trailed off, closing her eyes as if what she'd seen was too much.

"Tell me!" The king ordered.

Lena shuddered. "His soul was evil. I could feel it. That's when I screamed."

"Is that when he attacked you?" Jack asked. It would fit with his earlier theory about the drained mage.

"I'm not sure. But the one who took the princess…" She shook her head as if the memory was too terrible to consider. Her voice became hardly more than a whisper. "It was General Garland!"

The reaction from the guards was instantaneous. Murmuring filled the room. Even Jack sat up straighter at this revelation. He looked toward Kane in the doorway, but the young guardsman's face had gone pale.

Lord Redden squeezed his son's shoulder, steadying him. To Lena, he asked, "You're sure?"

"Yes," she said.

"Impossible!" the king growled. "Garland left the castle days ago! No one's seen him since."

"I beg your pardon, your majesty, but that isn't so," the guard captain said. "The general arrived at the south gate not an hour past. He said you had summoned him and that he was to report to you directly."

"I gave no such order!"

"Your majesty," the captain went on, "the general was attended by two serving men."

The king flushed scarlet from his neck to his crown. He stepped close to the captain, his face only inches from the other man's. "And you just let them in without question? Without so much as an escort?"

"Please, your grace, had it been anyone but the general, we would have been more thorough." Sweat was beginning to bead on the captain's brow, but his voice remained steady.

The king turned and spoke to Lena again, motioning toward the prisoner, his words clipped and sharp. "Heal this man!"

The white mage shrank within her blanket. "I can't."

"What do you mean, 'can't'?" the king shouted.

"Cascius!" Redden said sharply, stepping away from the door at last. "You forget yourself." Without waiting for Lena's explanation, he knelt beside the prisoner and placed a glowing hand over his head.

Lord Redden's healing spells lacked the elegance of those cast by a born white mage. Jack had seen the like before. While Redden could feel and manipulate the aether, he could not see it. Instead, after years of studying magical theory, Redden had achieved a rudimentary ability with both black and white magic by feel, using his will alone. It was called blood magic, due to its physical nature, but most people knew it as red magic. There were several red mages back home in Crescent Lake, none of them young; such skills took time.

The spell worked, unrefined though it was, like stitching with an awl rather than an embroidery needle. In response to the crude Cure, the man gasped, thrashing in his bonds. His eyes flew open, darting about the room, but his mouth compressed into a thin line.

The king grabbed him by the front of his robes. "Where has he taken her?" he growled.

The man smiled mirthlessly. "Well outside the city by now."

"Where?" the king repeated.

When the man said nothing, only continued to smile, the king slapped him so hard that the room rang with it. Lena whimpered at the sound and Jack wondered if she felt other people's pain as well as their emotions.

"How long has he worked for you?" said the king.

The man laughed. "Never! We work for him!"

"You lying dog!" one of the three guards said, surging forward, but the others held him back.

The king and Lord Redden exchanged glances. "That can't be," said Redden.

"Believe what you like," said the man. "The ritual will be completed at sunrise. You'll never find them in time."

"Ritual?" asked Kane.

"The Dark Lord demands a sacrifice. Only then can He be revived."

The king dove for the bound mage, hands aiming for his throat, but Lord Redden pushed him back, struggling to hold off his angry friend. Kane rushed to his father's aid, grabbing King Cascius by the back of his shirt and hauling him to his feet.

"Take him to the dungeons," Redden told the guards.

The captain directed the others to stand the man up, preparing to march him down the hall. Lord Redden was already steering the king toward the door, but from his place beside Lena, Jack saw the bard sway as though taken by a sudden dizziness, a red flash as a small piece of his aura was torn from him.

Lena cried out in alarm - she must have sensed something - and Jack saw a fire spell burn the prisoner's bonds away, saw him pull the captain's sword with his now free hands. Jack reached for the aether, but lost it when a blast of air flung away the guards and tossed both Jack and Lena back into the bed.

Time slowed to a crawl. Jack clamored for the aether, scrambling his way free of the bed. He saw the man rushing forward, sword aimed at the king's retreating back. The king was turning around now, but would never see the blow in time to dodge it. But then Kane was there, his own sword blocking the man's strike mere inches from its intended target. The young guardsman stood face to face with the dark mage, their swords locked together, arms straining. Jack could see the man drawing on the aether, saw his eyes replaced with a corona of red flame, preparing a fire spell Kane was powerless to stop.

And then Jack's hand closed on the nearest weapon he could find, the fireplace poker, and he raised it up and brought it down with an arm-jarring clang. The corona of the man's eyes winked out as he slumped to the floor.

Kane shook as he resheathed his sword. "Thank you," he said to Jack.

But Jack was looking past him. "Lord Redden?"

"I'm fine."

Kane turned. His father was pale as he leaned against the door frame. He looked back at Jack, horrified. "He drew power off of my father?"

"A small portion. Only enough to escape his bonds. Perhaps it was all he could manage in his drained state," Jack said.

Lena was aiding the captain to his feet, though she could not yet cast anything. The captain pushed her away, but stood slowly as if it pained him. "What was that?" he said angrily to Jack. "You said we had hours yet before his magic was restored!"

"I apologize," Jack said. "I didn't know he was a dark mage. I couldn't have predicted what he would do."

"And what do you know?" the king asked, quivering with the force of his fury. He strode forward, grabbing Jack by the front of his robes so forcefully that the scarf covering his face shifted below his chin, exposing his scars. The king, though, focused on his eyes, as if he too was a soul reader and could see Jack's deepest thoughts. "Ten years Garland worked for me and I never once suspected him. You've been here three days. What proof do I have that you aren't one of them too?"

"Cascius!" said Redden. "Don't."

"Stay out of this!" the king snapped to his friend. He turned his attention back to Jack. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't toss you in the darkest cell I have."

Every eye in the room was on him, the lone black mage in a castle that feared and hated black mages, his only allies an apprentice white mage, a low-ranking guard, and an old man who was rapidly trying the king's patience. But he was a black mage, the only one they had. Let them see what good a black mage can do, he thought.

"I can find your daughter."

The king blinked in confusion.

"What?" said Kane.

"How?" said the king.

"With black magic. I can do it."

"Black magic is forbidden," the king growled.

"That hasn't stopped them," Jack said, cocking his head toward the robed figure in the floor.

He kept his eyes on the king, whose stare bored into him. I mustn't look away, he thought. I will lose this if I look away. But it was the king who broke eye contact first, and Jack felt the humiliation sharp and hot when he realized the king was now looking more closely at his scarred face. He had trouble keeping his gaze steady when the king looked him in the eye a second time.

"I'm supposed to believe you're a Warrior of Light," the king said, coldly.

Jack could think of no response to this, so he said nothing.

He stumbled as the king released him roughly. Lena was beside him, steadying him, clinging tightly to his arm. The king was halfway out the door before Jack had his feet properly under him.

"Find her," the king said, but it was to Kane that he spoke, as though he could no longer stand the sight of Jack. "The four of you. You three and that thief boy, if you truly are the Warriors of prophecy, prove it."

He turned toward the door again, but the guard captain called after him, "Your majesty! What of the prisoner?"

"Execute him," the king said, evoking a gasp from Lena. "Preferably before he wakes up."

"Cascius..." Redden said again, softly, pleadingly.

"No," said the king, though he sounded more sad than angry now. "We've been at war with them long enough. They've gone too far, Redden." He turned toward Jack again. "Know that the same fate awaits you if you fail."

"I won't fail," Jack said, but the king was already gone.

The guards hauled the condemned man, still unconscious, from the room leaving the four of them alone at last: Jack, the young guardsman and his father, and Lena.

"He wouldn't," said Redden, scrubbing his face with his hands. "You must believe me, Jack. He's not that kind of man. He speaks out of grief only. It's his daughter he's worried about."

"I know," Jack said. Lena still gripped his arm, and he knew from her uneven breathing that she was crying again, soundlessly as she had before. "We need to move. A single Teleport could have taken him outside the city walls, but no farther."

"What if he cast it more than once?" Kane asked.

"If the Brotherhood had a single mage that powerful, the city would have fallen to them by now. Lord Redden, I wonder if you would find Thadius, please, and bring him here while I start the tracking spell. Kane, go back to our rooms and fetch my coat and staff. I don't know where we're going, but I'm not wearing these robes."

When only himself and Lena were left, he pulled her hand from his arm and faced her. "There's something you can do for me too, my lady."

He realized with chagrin that he had not yet straightened his wayward scarf, but it was too late now: she was looking at him, eyes brimming. "What can I do?" she asked.

"Stop holding back," he said. "Whatever you're feeling, feel it. Cry if you must. Then get dressed. I'll wait outside." He bowed, then left, and as he closed the door behind him, he heard her sobbing at last.

Author's Note: This chapter was uncooperative in a lot of ways. Originally, it was going to be from Kane's point of view and you were going to get more insight about his relationship with Sarah and a few things he knew about the king, but it absolutely wasn't working. Despite all the feels Kane was having at the situation, the chapter was coming off flat. My beta suggested it would be more interesting to see Jack's POV here, since he's doing all the cool stuff with the aether. I scrapped what I'd already done (2000 words!), started over, and the chapter basically wrote itself. So, thanks for that, Dizzy.
Just so you know, after the line "no one ever had to outrun a book", I REALLY wanted to make a Final Fantasy V "Library of the Ancients" joke, I REALLY did, but no matter how I tried, it just destroyed the flow of the paragraph. But I'm still giggling at the idea.