Chapter 101: Trickster

The lighting felt wrong.

No mundane torches or natural sunlight were filtering through the canvas.

The illumination was provided by dozens of floating, ghostly orbs of pale, violet faerie fire that cast long, unnatural, erratic shadows across the faces of the audience.

’It feels... weird,’ Seraphina thought, her small brow furrowing as she allowed herself to be hoisted up onto Sir Boris’s broad shoulders for a better view.

She blinked, pushing her Spirit Sight to the forefront, trying to get a read on the ambient mana of the tent.

But it was like trying to look through a thick, static-filled television screen.

The Verdant Gate was already a chaotic soup of magical energy, but inside this tent, the magical ’noise’ was deafening.

The spatial expansion arrays, the floating lights, and the volume of excited human auras completely scrambled her radar.

She couldn’t see any ghosts, nor could she see any distinctly hostile auras.

It was just a blinding, overwhelming blur of magical static.

"The atmospheric enchantments here are quite potent," Gallahan murmured, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Lucas near the top tier of the bleachers, keeping their backs firmly against the canvas wall near an exit slit. "Spatial distortion, thermal regulation... this is an expensive operation for a free show."

"Underworld money," Lucas grunted dismissively, his eyes scanning the crowd. "Smugglers often use traveling circuses to launder illicit funds or transport contraband across provincial borders. The magic is flashy to draw a crowd and distract the local guards. It’s shady, but it’s standard criminal enterprise. Keep your hands on your coin purses."

It made perfect, logical sense to the veteran knights.

The strange tension, the heavy incense, and the expensive magic were just the background radiation of a successful black-market front.

It wasn’t a threat to them; it was only a tax evasion scheme with acrobats.

The crowd settled, the excited chatter of hundreds of children reaching a fever pitch.

Suddenly, the floating violet orbs simultaneously extinguished, plunging the massive tent into absolute, pitch-black darkness.

The children gasped.

CRACK... BOOMMM!!!

A blinding, brilliant pillar of emerald-green fire erupted from the very center of the sandy stage, stretching thirty feet into the air.

From within the pillar of emerald flame, completely untouched by the heat, stepped the performers.

The show was, undeniably, spectacular.

For the next forty minutes, Seraphina found herself genuinely captivated, her cynicism temporarily overridden by the high-fantasy spectacle of it all.

There were acrobats who utilized gravity-reversal runes to dance across the ceiling of the tent.

There were beast-tamers who commanded shimmering, translucent tigers made entirely of spun water, fire-breathers who swallowed the emerald flames and exhaled them in the shapes of soaring, ephemeral phoenixes that flew over the heads of the crowd, showering the children in harmless, warm sparks of light.

"Papa wouldn’t let me do that," Seraphina giggled from Boris’s shoulders, reaching up to catch a harmless spark of magical fire.

"His Grace would freeze the entire menagerie before the performance began," Boris chuckled softly, keeping a massive hand securely on her back.

But as the final act approached, the atmosphere in the tent subtly, fundamentally shifted.

The acrobats vanished into the shadows.

The water tigers dissipated as the tent grew quiet, the only sound the low, rhythmic, hypnotic beating of a single hand drum from the shadows.

The center of the ring was empty.

"And now," a voice echoed through the tent.

It wasn’t loud, but it seemed to originate directly inside the ears of every single person in the audience.

It was a smooth, slippery, silken voice that made the hairs on the back of Seraphina’s neck stand up. "For our grand finale. A gift for the innocent! A miracle for the pure!!"

The sand in the center of the ring began to swirl, rising in a miniature tornado.

From the swirling sand stepped the Trickster.

He was a tall, unnervingly thin man.

He was dressed in a patchwork coat of clashing, vibrant colors like crimson, gold, and deep violet.

His face was entirely concealed by a porcelain mask painted with an exaggerated, weeping smile, leaving only two empty, dark holes for eyes.

He wore a top hat identical to the barker outside, and he carried a long, polished wooden cane.

He didn’t look like the elegant, plum-coated monster from Oakhaven.

Not only that, but he lacked that ancient, paralyzing ’void’ of terror.

But as Seraphina looked at him, her Dark Core gave a weak, uncomfortable little flutter.

’He feels... sticky, like jellies that Uncle Gally bought for me...’ Seraphina thought, her nose wrinkling.

The trickster’s aura wasn’t a void, and it wasn’t blinding light; rather, it felt like walking through an invisible spiderweb, clinging, unpleasant, and slightly nauseating.

The knights felt it too.

"His mana signature is foul," Lucas muttered, his hand tightening on his concealed hilt. "Necromancy? Or perhaps blood magic."

"He is a low-tier hedge mage using cheap parlor tricks," Gallahan whispered back, though his jaw was clenched. "He is trying to project an intimidating aura to impress the commoners. Do not let the theatrics unnerve you, Commander."

The Trickster raised his hands.

"Behold, the bounty of the unseen!" he cried out.

He snapped his fingers.

Instantly, the empty air above the audience shimmered with brilliant color of lights.

With a series of soft, popping sounds, hundreds of small, beautifully wrapped packages materialized out of thin air, falling gently down toward the bleachers like colorful rain.

The crowd erupted into an absolute pandemonium.

Children shrieked with joy, scrambling over the wooden benches, reaching their hands up to catch the falling gifts.

Parents laughed, picking up the small wooden boxes and plush toys that landed in their laps.

It was a shower of free souvenirs.

A small, soft object tumbled through the air, bouncing lightly off Sir Boris’s shoulder before landing directly in Seraphina’s lap.

Seraphina looked down.

It was a plushie.

It was a small, roughly stitched doll meant to look like a rabbit, made from scraps of deep purple fabric, with two black buttons for eyes.