Igor's first move was to research the cities with the lowest probability, all of them municipalities with less than thirty thousand inhabitants. He took the opportunity to rent properties in each of them, but they were always shacks in the poorest regions. He hoped, with that, to create an escape route that would be able to deceive the adversary. Then, he found for sale a very poor farm, with about one hectare just ten kilometers from Santa Sofia and bought it. It was maybe a hundred meters from a small highway, somewhat hidden and with an abandoned appearance, which suited his intentions. The house was falling apart, a real shack in ruins, but he paid the exorbitant price that was requested by the owner without arguing. With these preparations, he lost almost ten days, but thought it was time well spent to ensure a possible evacuation taking his bride.

With everything planned and checked, he went to the city of Santa Sofia and rented a small apartment in the suburbs, once again in the poor part of the town. In the first days he began by getting acquainted with the local geography and consulting the library, looking for all the tourist and commercial points of the city.

Igor heard about the existence of a reclusive millionaire and even tried to find his house, discovering that it was a real fortress and nothing there could prove that the rich man was Samuel, but he thought that the guy did not have a very clear conscience to keep so many guards.

Once well settled, he began his search wandering at random through the city. Santa Sofia had about fifty thousand inhabitants, quite small, and it was a very rich municipality. The streets were clean and spacious, but crime proliferated in plain sight, although there was no significant poverty.

Igor went almost every day to the cinema and used to have lunch at the most frequented restaurants. On the third day, he had the first clue, when he stopped at a restaurant to eat.

"Welcome back, sir," said the waiter, wiping the table and smiling. "I hope you have a good appetite."

In an instant reaction, Igor created subtle changes in his appearance, but that maintained the feeling of strong resemblance to himself.

"Sorry," he said, forcing a foreign accent and looking straight into his eyes, "but I have never been to this city before."

The waiter looked at him more closely and ended up saying:

"Oops, it's just that you look a lot like a customer who used to come here, sorry," he smiled and added. "And then, what will you have? The house suggestion is filet mignon, with mashed potatoes, peas and salad. It's very tasty and the price is very reasonable."

"It can be the house suggestion," said Igor. "So I look like this guy?"

"Yes, very much. He always came with some weird guys, but lately he hasn't shown up."

"Maybe he got a girl to distract himself," said Igor, laughing to see if he could fish for some information.

"Maybe," commented the waiter. "He never showed up with a girl, but he wore a ring. What will you drink?"

"Orange juice, please," answered Igor, thoughtful.

The attendant left and the wizard kept reflecting non-stop. It must be Samuel, but he didn't show up with Eduarda in his business and, for her sake, the young man preferred from the bottom of his heart that it was like that.

He decided that he would spend more time in that region, which was the central one and the only one with the highest concentration of commerce.

― ☼ ―

Eduarda woke up that morning with a strange feeling that mixed an infinite sadness with a love and nostalgia that she could not explain. She lived in luxury and wealth, in a beautiful mansion and with no reason to complain about anything, but all she felt was complete aversion to her way of life. Her husband was not in the room and she felt relieved because what she most wanted was to get rid of him, but every time she came to that conclusion and looked at Samuel's face, something happened and her will was undermined, no matter how much she fought against it.

However, every day that passed, this influence weakened a little and, aware of that, Samuel always kept four thugs to take care of her. Eduarda felt that the bodyguards had very specific orders about her.

Without enthusiasm, she got up and went to the bathroom. When she saw her face in the mirror, she felt depressed and did not recognize herself. Many times she looked at her own reflection and asked herself, depressed: "Who are you, where is the real Eduarda?" She had the clear impression that she should wake up happy and cheerful, that her face was not so thin but rather more youthful and beautiful. But the biggest feeling she had when she looked at her reflection was of an image of someone who always appeared behind her, who hugged her with all the affection and kissed her neck, provocative, someone who always gave her a rosebud. She tried in vain to focus on that image of a faded memory, but all she saw was a blurred golden stain, which brought tears to her eyes, a dream interrupted brutally just at its beginning, ended by the man who subjugated her.

The veil in her memory began to unfold again and the memories were too painful, which made her take a radical decision. She left the mirror, returned to the room and dressed, determined to go out a little and execute her plans. After breakfast, she said to the employee:

"Prepare my car. I want to go to the mall to do some shopping."

"Yes, ma'am," replied the employee. Since the boss did not forbid the mall, there was no reason to stop her.

― ☼ ―

Igor was starting to get very apprehensive and his concern was not because of the city or the crime itself. That detail, in his opinion, was for the authorities who had much more competence, not to mention the ancient law that prohibited interference in the mundane world except in cases of emergency. What worried him much more was the fact that, even being a small city and having a good clue of Samuel's whereabouts, the population volume was enough to make the search for his beloved Eduarda difficult to the point of having a risk of failure, at least in a timely manner.

Only in Santa Sofia he had been wandering for a fortnight every day through the central region without success and his instinct told him that there was the point with the highest degree of probability of finding her.

After several researches, he concluded that the best place to do the search was centered on that large square and was restricted to an approximate area of one hundred and fifty meters in radius and that could seem small to many, but it was huge, since he could not be on all sides at the same time.

He had just left the mall, the only one in the city, where he had toured all its stores looking at every detail with all the attention and meticulousness, as if it were the last time he would see that place and wanted to keep it alive in his memory, but that earned him the attention of the security guards who stopped him in the food court in nothing less than a massive group of six burly individuals. In the most shameless way possible and aided by his powers, the young man claimed that he was a film director and studied the mall for some scenes of a police action movie that would be shot in several cities in the country and with a lot of emphasis on that region. He still had the audacity to ask them if they wanted to participate in some scenes as co-stars, as they were very photogenic. To reinforce the effect, he materialized flashy business cards, handing one to each security guard.

The excuse was weak, but he reinforced it with a hypnotic order and the massage on the guards' ego was enough to leave him alone. Discouraged, he left and went to the main square of the city that was right next to the mall. He got a coffee at a kiosk and sat on a nearby bench, thinking about his fiancee.

On that day in particular, he tried to understand the reason for feeling a very great anguish and wondered if it would not be a consequence of a strong empathic connection with Eduarda, reinforcing what Ezequiel had said about her being a dormant sourceress. This gave him an interesting idea that he began to mature, which would be to use this connection to create a link that would work as a radio beacon, actually a psychobeacon.

He had finished the coffee at that moment and thrown away the cup in the trash, going back to thinking about the hypothesis of an empathic location, when he heard two shots nearby. Even in that city where crime had a dizzying and inexplicable rise, it was unprecedented to see or hear shots in the downtown, especially during the day. Worried, he turned in the direction of the sound and what he saw, left him so scared that even his hair stood on end and his blood froze.

About fifty meters away, running like crazy, came Eduarda chased by four truculent and armed men. He did not believe his eyes or imagined that Samuel had authorized the use of firearms against her, but he did not stand still to see the woman of his life shot dead, especially because, from where she came, she could not see the car that would run her over at the next corner, that is, if she was not shot dead before.

Anguished, he ran across the square while his appearance changed with every step he took. In less than two seconds he was already wearing his white clothes and cape, with the golden sword, shining brightly at his waist. Because of the despair, he violated an ancient law that prohibited revealing himself to the world, but the transformation was so fast that no one noticed, especially since the people who were there focused their attention in the direction of the shots. Without delay, he reached the center of the square and advanced towards the shopping street.

Seeing that he would not reach her in time to avoid the run over, Igor had no doubt: he moved his hand in the direction of the car, closing it and turning his wrist clockwise. Without any explanation, the four wheels of the vehicle locked, making it skid with a sharp and frightening screech for about ten meters before stopping. To the occupants' misfortune, they were soon rammed by three more cars in sequence, causing a major pile-up on the access road to the mall.

Now the risk of the run over no longer existed, but he still needed to neutralize the criminals before his fiancee was shot, but the big problem was that Eduarda was right in the middle of the way.

As the shots did not stop, the population of the city, who did not already understand anything that was happening, began to flee from that block in panic and some called the police. Two more shots were fired and Igor was relieved to see that the criminals shot to intimidate, pointing their guns up.

In the eagerness to escape, Eduarda sped up, swerved a little to the side and tripped. She still tried to recover her balance by running a few meters inclined and with her arms swinging in all directions, until she fell, hitting her head and becoming dazed on the floor.

The wizard's first reaction was panic, but then he noticed that she was not injured and chose to first solve the case with the most dangerous elements, since the path was open and the opportunity was perfect to act. He raised his hand in a cup, creating a ball of very intense but harmless static energy, and threw it at them, hitting the closest one who was hit full and fell trembling with strong convulsions caused by electricity. The companion who came behind tripped and started running with his body leaning forward, losing his weapon and also spinning his arms in a vain attempt to regain his balance, when he received the second ball of energy in his legs and in the same way he went to the ground with intense and uncontrolled tremors, losing consciousness afterwards.

While attacking, Igor kept his personal barrier raised and made his image become smoky and very diffuse so that it was very difficult to be recognized.

The two remaining thugs managed to see that they were attacked by a stranger wrapped in a green fog and threw themselves to the sides, protected between parked cars and resumed shooting, this time at him and to kill.

Angry with this arbitrariness that could have taken the lives of innocent citizens, he approached the men, ignoring the bullets that hit his protection in vain. He pulled the sword from the scabbard and began to move it in a frightening way, looking like a mad warrior. With a well-calculated blow, he cut the weapon of the closest one as if he were clearing his way through the bush. When he saw himself cornered, the thug dropped the weapon and ran away, trying to save himself, but the companion did not give in to fear and kept shooting. Annoyed, Igor made a sudden movement and cut off his hand that wielded the pistol. Screaming in pain, the criminal looked at his wrist where the blood gushed in spurts. Igor bent down and picked up the hand, releasing it from the weapon and showing it to the bandit. Then he brought it closer to the stump and joined the parts, which became one again, as if it had never been cut off, but he still felt the pains that the wizard left as a moral effect.

"Now get out of here, dude, or I'll cut your head off and not put it back," he said, threateningly.

The man did not even try to understand what happened because for him it was inexplicable a thing made of green smoke to cut his hand and then put it back, like magic. The threat was so explicit, that he did not want to test the patience of that thing, especially with the pains keeping the memory alive. He turned and ran in the opposite direction without even looking back.

From various corners and corners, frightened passers-by watched what happened, seeing the ghostly subject look at the sword, all stained with blood. To the astonishment of most, the blade became immaculate, bright and the stranger put it back in the scabbard.

Igor turned to his Eduarda, feeling a shiver in his spine and freezing for the second time in a very short time to see that she was no longer there. The first thing he did was to curse loudly and the second was to blame and censor himself for having failed to keep his attention on her for a few seconds.

― ☼ ―

Eduarda was a little stunned by the blow, but recovered quickly and, when she noticed the criminals busy with another strange guy who wore a white cape and released green smoke all over his body, she did not stand still waiting for the outcome of the encounter. She got up and ran again, sometimes looking back to see if they were following her. She ran with difficulty and tripped for the second time, but managed to regain her balance.

She stopped, took off her high heels and lifted her dress a little despite being quite short, returning to her frantic run and looking again at the singular combat that unfolded behind her and where she could swear she had seen her husband nearby, maybe just a small nuance, but that made her speed up the pace as much as she could. She slipped through a narrow alley where only pedestrians passed and changed direction as soon as she left the alley, trying to get away as much as possible and feeling pain in her feet. Panting and desperate, she looked around and tried to identify where she was, although that did not matter to her as long as she was away from the thugs and her husband. All she wanted was to get to a police station and report the abuses she suffered.

Once again she paused her frantic run and a strange dizziness took over her. She leaned against the wall and felt pain in her hand, looking at it and seeing that it was scraped with the fall, but it was not serious because it only burned. Eduarda looked around one more time to find herself lost. She was about to start walking again when a sharp pain seized her, making her bend over herself. With difficulty, she took a step forward and the malaise worsened, but the girl persisted in her uncertain walk, seeming even drunk. Unable to continue with the fast advance, the fatigue manifested itself all at once, allying itself with the dizziness that increased without stopping and the strong abdominal cramps.

As she was at least six blocks from the mall, if not much more than that, she did not worry much about continuing the escape, especially because her walk was now no more than a mere drag, leaning on the walls of the houses where she passed, leaving, sometimes, small blood stains from her hand. When she reached the corner, she was already with her body taken by uncontrollable pains and looked for a place to sit, finding nothing and standing still, with her reasoning blunted. She turned to the side, willing to sit on the floor leaning against the wall, but she was not very rational when she fell unconscious in her husband's arms.

― ☼ ―