Firstly, hi, it’s been a while.
Just wanted to let you guys know I’m working on a short continuation for this fic. It’ll be about 4 parts long, probably about 1400-2000 words a chapter. I don’t know when it’ll be up though because I’ve only written part 1 so please be patient.

Secondly, this is a drabble, but not really. It’s more like some of the stuff that got left out because I am a lazy writer… It’s made up of a bunch of parts that take part after Hakyeon and Leo escape the palace. Most of them slot into Chapter 30 and are about Yeongsik. This will probably be the only drabble before of the continuation.

Drabble – A Good Actor

*A month-ish after Chapter 28*

Hakyeon is tense. Very tense. As he walks up to the door of Yeongsik’s house he can’t help thinking of all the situations that would somehow reveal that he’d betrayed the king and stolen an Anyethi that is now solely in his possession. If that was revealed, would the other sorcerers demand to also use Leo?

“Hakyeon,” Yeongsik greets when he opens the door.

Hakyeon smiles as convincingly as he can and lets the older sorcerer show him into the house. He’s taken to a large meeting room where a number of sorcerers had gathered  for this meeting. He doesn’t like the way it feels like they’d been waiting for him but he takes his seat and waits patiently.

“Okay, let’s start this then,” Yeongsik calls. “First off I want to introduce Cha Hakyeon.”

Hakyeon nods politely and even shakes the hands that are offered.

“Hakyeon is actually Dohyun’s apprentice.”

That pulls Hakyeon up short. “I wasn’t aware that you knew Dohyun.”

“He had a tendency to just show up whenever he liked,” one of the sorcerers laughs. “He never traded with us and he was secretive about his work. He would just come to the meeting and then leave.”

As far as Hakyeon can see Dohyun’s only reason for showing up was so the other sorcerers didn’t turn against him in some way. Frankly Hakyeon had a feeling he was going to be exactly the same, he didn’t ever want to come to these people for help or ingredients.

“Anyway,” Yeongsik says loudly, drawing the attention back to himself. “Hakyeon used to work in the palace and we spent a fair bit of time together over the last two years. I can swear that Hakyeon is on our side.”

“You must be the first sorcerer to ever willingly leave the palace.”

“It’s more like ‘escape’,” Hakyeon says truthfully, he’d spent a long time thinking up his bull answers so he was actually a little glad he got to use them. “Once you’re no longer useful the king sends you to the front lines.”

“I hear you released a bunch of creatures and that’s why the king wants you killed.”

I need them on my side, the sorcerer thinks.

“It’s the other way around. I was just doing my job and he felt threatened. I figured the least I could do was relieve him of the ingredients he treasures so much. It annoys me that the king demands the best ingredients so when I was running I just opened a few cages, you know?”

“Apparently the Anyethi the king had escaped on the same day?”

“I didn’t know that. It must have taken advantage of the chaos. That’s really too bad, I could have brought it with me.”

One of the sorcerers next to Hakyeon claps him on the back and grins. “No worries, if you ever catch it bring it in, yeah?”

“Of course.”

“How did it go?” Leo asks when they land in their bedroom.

“I don’t want to go ever again,” Hakyeon mutters, sinking onto the bed.

He’d had to walk a long way to meet Leo who had anxiously been hiding out in a small town for the last four hours. Pretty much the second Hakyeon had shown up he’d teleported them home.

“They organized a hunting party today, to go capture a dragon… They wanted me to go too. Then a few of them were talking about experiments they were doing…”

Leo joins the sorcerer on the bed, pulling him into a tight embrace. “At least it’ll be a while before the next one.”

A month wasn’t long enough in Hakyeon’s opinion. “There were apprentices everywhere,” he groans into the Anyethi’s throat.

*Between bits of Chapter 30*

With something between a sigh and a groan Hakyeon closes the cover of the large book on his lap. It, like all the other books he owned, had ultimately been useless. He kind of misses the library at the palace and all of its old, outdated books and for a second he considers getting Jaehwan to send him some. He writes that plan off quickly, Jaehwan was needed at the palace, he couldn’t be caught making exchanges with a wanted criminal.

This time his sigh is definitely more of a groan as he realizes what it is he’s going to have to do. The next meeting at Yeongsik’s was in a week and he was going to have to ask a favour.

“We act on a sort of trading system,” Yeongsik explains when Hakyeon asks to buy some books off him.

Hakyeon frowns. “So I would have to…?”

“Do something in return for me, yes,” the older sorcerer finishes. “Unless you have any ingredients you want to trade.”

“Oh,” Hakyeon mutters. He doesn’t have any particularly rare ingredients right now since he wasn’t making potions, he was focussed entirely on researching and trying to make a spell that took away magic.

“What sort of favour would you ask?”

Yeongsik was willing to give Hakyeon a lot of the older spell books, stating they were useless and that he couldn’t teach his apprentices from them anyway. However, after skimming through a few Hakyeon knew they were exactly what he was after. An older book had helped him figure out what had gone wrong with Leo’s spell, and now he knew that an older book could help him invent a new spell too.

“I have a lot of apprentices and I was wondering if you’d be willing to train a couple. They’re intermediate level in the spells so you’ll basically just have to guide them.”

Hakyeon really doesn’t want sorcerers in his house, especially not ones trained by Yeongsik, but his mind wanders back to the spell he needed to invent Also he can’t think of anything else to trade for the books or an excuse as to why he couldn’t train them.

“I suppose that will be fine. How long for?”

“Just until they hit the advanced level spells. It should be a bit less than a year.”

Hakyeon sighs. “I’ll do it then.”

Yeongsik actually looks surprised by Hakyeon’s agreement. “I’ll send all these books over then. The apprentices will be over in the next month or so, okay?”

“That’s fine…”

That should give him plenty of time to finish training his intuitive magic with Leo.

*About 3 months after Chapter 30*

“Are you sure this is something you need to do?” Ravi asks. “I understand when guards show up at your house and attack you, but you’re planning to go to a sorcerer’s house and attack them.”

Hakyeon sighs, sick of Ravi asking this over and over. “It’s okay, Ravi. The no magic spell is working now. I won’t be killing them.”

“You’ve only brought me people that are alive in ones or twos. Are you sure?”

It had been five weeks since Hakyeon’s apprentices had kidnapped Leo and four weeks since Hakyeon’s sudden breakthrough in the no-magic spell. Frankly Ravi wasn’t sure what was more disconcerting, that Hakyeon was so worked up over the incident with the apprentices that he wanted to get everything done faster, or that he’d actually managed to invent a spell that took away a person’s deliberate and intuitive magic.

“I’m sure. I can do this.”

Ravi really doesn’t like how determined Hakyeon is to do this, to take away every sorcerer’s magic. He’s not convinced Hakyeon has a firm enough grasp on this new spell to go to a location and take the magic of several sorcerers. Ravi looks at Leo, wondering what he thinks of everything, but the Anyethi looks away.

“I’ll be fine,” Hakyeon states when he catches Ravi in the act.

Ravi has never had to ring the doorbell at Hakyeon’s house before. He wonders if they’re still gone – which concerns him because it’s been two days now – but when he peeks through the window again he sees Leo teleport into the room.

The Anyethi takes one look at him and then teleports outside, meowing in greeting.

“Why didn’t Hakyeon open the door?” Ravi enquires.

Leo meows again and wraps himself around the potion maker’s leg. Ravi braces himself but luckily they land smoothly in Hakyeon’s bedroom.

“Hakyeon?”

The lump in the bed stirs and Hakyeon lifts his head to look over the covers at Ravi. “What?”

Ravi has several questions he wants to ask, most are about how long magic has been causing the sorcerer to get like this, but instead he asks, “How did it go?”

“Good. I knocked them out before I was recognized. I’m going to have to remember to use a cushioning spell next time though, almost killed a few of them by accident.”

“How many were there?”

“Nine at the house and then two suppliers we ran into on the way there.”

That’s a lot, the potion maker thinks to himself. Why hadn’t Hakyeon tested this on a smaller group? “And the spell? How did it work?”

“Perfectly. It uses more deliberate magic than I thought.”

Which explains his condition.

Ravi is about to tell Hakyeon that he probably shouldn’t use any magic for a while when Hakyeon speaks.

“Everything is okay, though. I’ll be fine in a few days and then we can go again.”

Ravi wants to pretend he doesn’t see worried look on Leo’s face – or as worried as he could look as a cat – but he does and it almost prompts him to voice his concerns over Hakyeon’s wellbeing. But he doesn’t. Instead the potion maker runs a hand over Leo’s silky fur and tries to remember how he used to be so envious of Hakyeon’s magic.

“I’ll make you some sort of suppressant so you can recover faster.”

A small smile appears on Hakyeon’s lips and the other two can’t help but feel relieved to see it.

The meeting has already started when Hakyeon enters the room. The noise, which had already been high due to the chaos going on at the moment, gets even louder when they see the bruised Hakyeon.

“What happened to you?” Yeongsik demands.

“I’m sure you all know by now that someone is going around attack sorcerers and their apprentices and taking their magic,” Hakyeon says, sitting down at the table. “Last night that bastard came for me.”

Hakyeon really needs them to take this bait and going by the outraged shouting they do. Hakyeon gives his answers to the questions asked, stating that he’d taken them by surprise because they hadn’t known he had so many detection spells surrounding his house.

“So, did you win?”

“They got away,” Hakyeon mutters. “They hit me with a disorientation spell I couldn’t go after them.”

“We have to do something about this,” a sorcerer growls. “How long before it’s us they’re picking off?”

“Well do you have any idea who it is?” another sorcerer demands.

“How the hell would I know?”

“I have an idea of who it is,” Hakyeon states and suddenly the whole room is quiet. “The only people who know where my house is are a select few of you, and the royal guard.”

“Are you suggesting one of us did it?!”

“No! I’m suggesting it was the king. The sorcerers that have been targeted so far have all, at some point, worked in the palace. Most of them were ingredient suppliers.”

After that Hakyeon has an easy time steering their paranoia and prejudice in the direction he needs it to go.  For the first time in two years Hakyeon has a reason to write to the prince via Ravi and Jaehwan and tell him about his plan.

*A little after*

“Hakyeon,” Yeongsik says as he takes a seat in Hakyeon’s favourite armchair. “I don’t know if we ever get a chance to discuss what happened with those two apprentices. I am sorry about that.”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Hakyeon smiles flakily. “It happened months ago. Besides, I’m sorry about what happened too. They were going to sell something of mine to the king.”

Yeongsik sighs in relief. “Well I’m glad you know I had nothing to do with it. With everything that’s going on it’s easy to be suspicious of each other.”

Hakyeon hums in agreement. “Would you like some tea?”

“That would be great.”

Hakyeon leaves for the kitchen just as Leo, who has just woken up from a nap, walks into the lounge room. He stops where he is, fear spreading through his body as he resist the urge the teleport to safety.

“I didn’t know you had a cat, Hakyeon!” Yeongsik calls.

The younger sorcerer’s heart stops for a moment and he sticks his head out to see what’s going on. His eyes meet Leo’s and he manages to smile.

“That’s Leo,” he says simply as the cat begins to run away. “He hates people though.”

I think I left all this crap out because the present chapters were all plotty and the past chapters were at an end. Oh well. Now you know how Hakyeon dealt with Yeongsik for 6 years.
I still haven’t addressed the plot hole that’s lurking around in this time spot, have you guys even noticed? It’s not major and I have an explanation I just haven’t written it in. 

Anyway, if you have questions about this drabble, as always, you’re free to ask.
The continuation will be up whenever I finish writing it.