Magic words and contracts are particularly tricky. Not only do they change depending on the realm, but some realms favor the letter or the law, and others favor the spirit of the law. Normally, these magical bonds boil down to who issued them and who received them.

  For example, many ethereals will recruit from Earth via magical contracts. They have the magical means to enforce the contract even though most humans don’t. Of course, the guild makes any parties leaving Earth sign our own contracts before they can be recruited, and we also have the means to enforce our contracts.

  There have been far too many times someone has made a contract with a human and twisted the contract to force the human outside the spirit of the contract. I want to emphasize that there is not a single case on record where an ethereal broke the spirit of the contract and didn’t regret it.

  -Magical contract law primer.

  Lady Heartbran doesn’t stay long after I acquiesce to her request. She also refrains from making me immediately take the pledge of loyalty. She packs up and heads out, only trying to flaunt her power a little by using the fire of the torches to wrap around the shafts and pull them to her hand before leaving.

  As she and her guards evacuate, I hear her mention something to the guards about the dungeon and how the nobles are riled up. It seems the new level to the dungeon has created quite a stir within the house, and Lady Heartbran has bigger fish to fry.

  The first thing I do after she leaves is to find the silver ring among the dead noble’s things. I feel an instant relief as it slides on my finger, and the fine control of my mana returns. Despite the magical freedom and recent brushes with danger, I’m exhausted. I’m not sure if it is the adrenaline or all the fighting, but as soon as my head hits the pillow, I’m out.

  When I wake up, I find myself facing two guards and a butler. It seems Lady Heartbran is not willing to wait any longer for me to give my allegiance.

  “How can I help you?” I grumble groggily, wiping the sleep from my eyes.

  The guard responds, “We are here to help you bathe and get ready for your audience.”

  “Really? Both of you?” I ask, exasperated, “Trying to control how I enjoy my bath?”

  “We heard you sometimes have trouble.” The guard states, referencing my last time arriving late to court. He smiles down, but it doesn’t look very friendly.

  A few minutes later, I’m standing in front of the audience room surrounded by the nobles of House Heartbran. Behind me are two soaking wet guards. In front of me are a puzzled Lord Heartbran, Lady Heartbran, and Olivia.

  “I’m here to take the oath of fealty,” I announce, smirking, prompting them out of their stupor.

  “I understand that,” Lord Heartbran points to the men behind me, “why are they wet?”

  I turn back to look at the two guards sulking in their wet armor. I cheekily say, “Baths can be quite dangerous. I told them it is safer to keep their distance, but they were insistent that they would help regardless of the danger it presented.”

  Muffled chuckles echo around the room, and I see Lady Heartbran pointedly looking at the silver ring on my finger with a frown.

  “I see.” The Lord of the house replies, unamused.

  Lady Heartbran clears her throat. “I think you were here to say an oath. Tales of your bath time are not what we are here to discuss.”

  I nod, sporting a smirk as I get down on my knee.

  I had given this considerable thought the night before. I can’t trust Lady or Lord Heartbran. It’s clear they see me only as a trophy or like a prized hound, and I have no doubt they will sacrifice me in a moment to solidify the stability of their precarious house.

  So, I insert a small change. “I, Jason Kelly, pledge to serve Olivia Heartbran faithfully, as a branch member of the house Heartbran. To protect, defend, and aid her as she has done for me.”

  I see the hints of a frown on the Lord of the house, but the Lady is scowling with barely contained anger.

  The butler had prepped me on what I would be required to say. He gave me a long, flowery speech about how I would serve and follow every command. How I would devote myself to Lord and Lady Heartbran’s service with all my being. He also said a lot of other words that meant basically the same thing: I would do whatever, whenever they wanted.

  At the end of the speech, I am expected to debase myself and ask to serve at the Lady Heartbran’s command. I’m not kidding, he wants me to debase myself to strengthen the standing of people who don’t care about me, in front of others who don’t even know me. He emphasized it would garner favor with my new liege lords. When asked about other branch houses did their allegiance, he didn’t want to give a straight answer. He tried to say they had already shown their allegiance, and it’s a formality, while I’m an outsider who needs to curry favor.

  After ten minutes of questions and a thoroughly soaked butler later, I learned there are only three essentials to make it through the ceremony. I have to pledge to serve the house, I have to pledge to serve directly under at least one member of the main branch, and I have to physically bend the knee.

  I try to inject more of the butler’s nonsense speech, but in the end, I’m not much of an orator. I probably burned a few bridges, but those same bridges were already not to be trusted.

  There is a stunned silence in the room. Lady Heartbran is the political powerhouse, and Lord Heartbran is the Lord of the house by blood. Pledging to the heir who just got grounded for sneaking out isn’t a popular move right now.

  Still, she’s the only one of the three I remotely trust. I look up to see Olivia ashen white and put on the spot. In my gamble, I didn’t actually consider that she might not take my pledge of loyalty. For a moment, I begin to panic, wondering how I’m going to escape in broad daylight. If she says ‘no’, will I be forced to make the same pledge to Lord and Lady Heartbran on threat of death?

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  The night before, I had darkness at my beck and call. In broad daylight, I’m at a massive disadvantage.

  Slowly, under the gaze of house Heartbran, she moves forward and places her hand on my head. “I, Olivia Heartbran, receive your pledge of allegiance to the Heartbran house. Rise and fulfill your oath as a member of this great house, Lord Jason Kelly.”

  As soon as her hand lifts, I rise, and the guards escort me out of the room. The Lord and Lady of the house aren’t willing to let me stay to do anything else to embarrass them. When the guards guide me out of the house, I’m confused at first.

  “Where are we headed?” I ask suspiciously.

  “Your things were moved to your new residence.” He grumbles, still upset that he is wet.

  I roll my eyes, “Hold still.”

  I wanted to teach them a lesson, but walking more than a mile while soaking wet seems too cruel for my prank. There is no reason to make them unnecessarily grumpy. I wave my hand, and water is pulled from them onto the ground. I don’t get all of it; their aura interferes, but I get most.

  The estate is a medium-sized house, at least by Earth standards. The house is a timber-framed Tudor-style house with stone shingles. The house has a den, three bedrooms, a kitchen, and a garden in the backyard. There is a wooden gate forming a square two meters from the wall of the structure and a shed to the side, just outside the gate. I can see another building, the roof peeking out behind the house.

  When I walk into the house, I find it barren; someone has cleaned it out. My first clue is that someone who recently visited the house had taken the furniture. Thinking back to Lord Brighteye, I am certain he didn’t live in a bare house.

  “Why has the house been emptied?” I ask.

  Still grumpy, one of the guards shrugs before he replies in a snarky tone, “Probably should not have pulled that stunt in the throne room. Everyone knows the lady of the house can make things right nasty for anyone who crosses her. I would if all that happens is you sleep on a hard floor for a few nights, you are getting off easy.”

  I do a quick tour through the house, checking out the first floor and the second floor of the house, where all the bedrooms are located. On the counter in the kitchen is a bag filled with a hundred gold coins and a note: Next time you pull a stunt like that, I will take the roof too.

  I crumple the note in my hand after I snatch it from the knight. She wants me to take the money promised as part of my reward to buy new furniture to teach me a lesson. Truthfully, I’m in a pretty good spot. I have a bundle of magical gear, plenty of training stones, a few days of food in the house her servants couldn’t make out with, and two sets of robes. It’s by no means a fortune, but it’s plenty to get myself started once I find a place to sell gear, buy furniture, buy groceries, and… Maybe it's not quite that great.

  Well, I’m in a bad spot, and I have no doubt the money will dwindle once the first merchant realizes I have no idea what the cost of things is. To make matters worse, I’m supposed to get three knights, a steward, and a few others to support my house. Aside from paying for them, giving them food and other necessities, without any form of income, they will also put a strain on my meager funds.

  Putting that aside for now, I feel out for Morgana crawling through the bushes and exploring the property. I reach out across the bond and get a sense of a predator guarding its new lair. I also sense she must have consumed many hearts because now she feels more whole and stable.

  I scratch my head as I consider that. As an undead, she is very lifeless emotionally, but the hearts of the magi have given her a greater capacity for emotion. Despite her new felt depth of being, she never felt like a farm girl missing her family or even a scar victim of the war with the elves.

  She has shown emotion, even the shallow mimicry of emotion, before eating the hearts of my enemies. Thinking back, she only ever showed emotion regarding me. Against others, she is almost psychopathic. On the road, she was worried I’m unhappy with how she might smell, but I can feel the cold way she assesses others as degrees of threats instead of people or friends.

  It is like she is stripped of the ability to empathize with others. Now that I think about it, I wonder if the bond allows her to feel my emotions. Maybe as an undead, she lost the ability to use the mirror neurons that allow her to imagine how others would feel, but the bond allows her to see how I feel.

  In the estate, she did not hesitate to consider killing others to protect me. In the dungeon, she had gone against my order to stay away, so she could protect me from the bear. Even in the sewer, she went out of her way to comfort me when I was having a mental breakdown after the battle.

  Her development scares me. Not because I think she will hurt me. The connection through the bond reassures me that she would never consider it.

  When I formed our connection, I wanted her to live, but I’m not sure what she’s doing is living. It’s like the memory of the farm girl is getting twisted as she forgets what it’s like to be human. She’s becoming more feral.

  As if responding to my concern, she pokes her head into the house, checking on me. I smile and wave. She mimics the action before slinking off to continue to patrol. Now that I think about it, since bringing her back, all she has done is fight and protect me. Maybe I just need to give her the time and space to be a farm girl.

  I try to imagine her skipping around the estate with a pale in one hand as she giggles and waves at everyone, and all I could picture is the horrific claw form running around the farm to harvest eggs or gather water from the well. Maybe I would start with a few simple tasks first and work my way up to doing ‘farm girl’ tasks. A voice deep inside tugs at me, whispering I should let her go. That she is dead, and I’m corrupting her by putting her in situations where she had to fight. I told that voice to stuff it and push it deep down with all the other things I refuse to accept.

  It took a few hours, but the first two residents of my new estate arrived. Two women approach, one is a short, spacey-looking woman in a plain green dress, with long, thick hair slightly disarrayed. Through my empathy, I could feel her jumping from one thought to the next, curiosity tinged with just a bit of awe.

  The other woman looks well put together and walks with purpose. She has a red dress, a stack of papers, and her hair tied up in a knot. She looks like what you think a businesswoman in the 1800’s might look like. I can feel her irritation underneath a feeling of purposeful duty.

  I exit the front door of the house to meet my first visitors. “Hello, welcome!”

  The businesswoman looks me up and down, scrutinizing me while her companion doesn’t even notice I’m talking to her. “Yes, you are lord Kelly. I am Alissa, your new steward. With me is Amanda, who will serve as maid for your new estate.”

  I nod, a little taken aback by her straightforward manner. It’s not that I have never met someone who’s straightforward and all business, but not in my new life. Even while we’re constantly moving to make it back to the estate, there is a certain small-town leisure and small talk that pervades society. I give her my best smile and hold out my hand.

  “A Wilder custom, I assume. I really have my work ahead of me.” She says, staring down at my hand like it’s covered in feces. With my hand still out, she strides past me. Amanda follows her until she jumps as she sees me.

  “Oh! Hello there, my name is Amanda. I’m here as a maid for the new lord of this house. Lord Mace Kiwi.” Her eyes lock on my hand, and she moves closer. “Is your hand ok, mister?”

  I drop my hand and try to maintain my smile. “I’m Jason Kelly. It is a pleasure to meet you.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, too! Have you happened to see Lord Kiwi about? Is he your friend?” She asks with innocent curiosity.

  “Yeah, I know him. Do you want to head in?” I say, gesturing to the house.

  “Wait, are you mister Kiwi? You should probably change your name, or all the other nobles are going to think you are a farmer.”