The words escaped his lips without his realization, but she didn't seem to notice him at all.
There was blood everywhere on the bare floor, which would be enough to make anyone pass out, but she was still standing. His heart raced rapidly. Thousands of possibilities went through his head at once. How could this woman with no key enter his house out of nowhere? Where did she come from?
Luca stayed next to the door out of caution, ready to bolt out if anything happened. First, he tried to understand what was going on.
At first, he considered that the landlord had decided it was too wasteful to rent out only this small room, and had decided to admit another tenant. But that was the most absurd out of all the possibilities.
There was no way she got in through the door. The reasoning for that was simple. There was no blood in the hallway leading up to his room's door, nor was there any even where he stood. The blood pooled out from under her body in a small circle. And it looked like it mostly came from her head.
Luca noticed something else. Something that made him far more cautious. A faint circle-like burn mark had been engraved into the floor.
"That most certainly wasn't there earlier…"
And the last factor that led to his deciding judgement of the case. The woman herself.
She was fair, with long dark hair that cascaded down her back. He couldn't see her face properly with all the blood covering it, but she was a beauty despite that. Resembling a lady from any one of the noble houses in the city.
Then the purple robes, although they were burned from what looked like fire, were still of a much higher quality than anything he was wearing or had ever worn in his life.
This was something he could naturally tell from his week of running errands for Mina the Tailor.
The mysterious appearance in his room with a large burn mark? The blood? The fire-singed robes that were still better quality than his? All of this pointed to one thing, from what he could tell.
Luca's breath hitched slightly as he stared at the woman with a new understanding.
"A mage."
It was then that he'd made his decision.
"I need to get the hell out of here before someone comes. I don't want to be burned at the stake!"
His words still didn't reach the delirious mage, but he didn't care.
It was written clearly in the Church's Scriptures as well as the laws of the Kingdom of Astor. Anyone who harbored a mage with the knowledge that they were one was to be burned at the stake with the magical practitioner. Even the most uneducated bum knew that law.
If there was one thing the Divine Solaran Empire was not known for, it was nuance. The Empire and the Church of Sol would do as they saw fit, as long as they were convinced you were guilty. And Luca was not about to get wrapped up in that mess, not when he was about to change his life forever!
However, it seemed as if life had other plans. As soon as the thought crossed his mind, a loud noise pierced through the air from all directions.
SHRIEEEEEEEEK~!
Luca couldn't help but grip his ears at the sudden noise. He strained to look around for the source. There was only a small window in his room, but he could only see a large silhouette seemingly blotting out the sun.
'What the-'
BOOM!
Another loud noise, this time coming directly from above as something hurtled right through his ceiling.
Haider, a Solar Knight of the Inquisition, had jumped down from the Sun Eagle as soon as he confirmed the location of the malevolent mage that had escaped from their ambush earlier. His body slammed through the thatched roof and into the room of the small rented house.
The fall was nothing compared to the training he'd been put through. Dust rose at his impact, causing him to put on his guard as he raised the small buckler and unsheathed the sword named Morning Glow.
'The Mage is still alive. She used a Teleportation spell to get here' Haider thought, promptly locating her on the ground not far from him at all.
Finally it seemed that the loud collapse triggered her consciousness.
She raised her staff, and some incomprehensible words of power spewed out from her lips. The gem at the top of the wooden staff shone with mysterious light, and a small cloud of dust gathered. The cloud settled under her feet, letting her float in the air effortlessly.
Haider could see through the facade, though. She was bluffing.
Morning Glow rose to its full glory in his hands. It shone with the golden light of the Lord, rivaling the heretic mage's light.
He shot forward, leaving a golden streak of light following him, then he sliced down. A pillar of golden-hot sunlight appeared where his sword struck, purifying the heretic and ending the drawn-out battle once and for all.
Thud!
Her head fell to the ground with no fanfare, and the cloud of dust that she floated on disappeared unceremoniously, too. Spells like that couldn't survive after the caster died. Her body and staff also fell, now headless and ownerless.
Luca had long collapsed to the floor, watching all of the events unfold.
He could see the decapitated body and armoured man who'd just sheathed his weapon, as well as the massive platinum-feathered eagle circling above, through the two massive holes made in his ceiling. The first was from the knight's arrival, and the second from the pillar of light.
'That's… going to take a fortune… to fix, so… there goes all my savings,' he couldn't help but think, despite everything that happened and everything that he saw.
However, that was only the secondary thing on his mind at the moment. Luca remembered what he had been trying to do before the knight crashed through his ceiling. He didn't want to get implicated in whatever this was.
He quickly lifted his hand, trying to say something, but found that no words came out of his mouth. He was too scared to speak!
What had he just seen? The cloud of dust! The glowing staff! The pillar of lights! What world was he in now?!
So all he could do was stare at Haider, who had just now noticed him.
Haider nodded, staring through his helmet visor at the decapitated body lying on the ground/
A few seconds later, his deep but youthful voice finally spoke out in the room.
"By the Sun Father's grace, the vile mage has been cleansed successfully."
Luca stared wordlessly this entire time. His heart beat wildly as if it wanted to escape his chest.
Haider gave Luca a long glance.
"By the power vested in me as a member of the Order of the Solar Knights of the Inquisition, you are coming with me for interrogation."