Chapter Three Hundred And Ninety Five - 395
Layer after layer, doggedly pursuing the meandering Marks of her associate, Zara had delved truly deep. While above the ramshackle huts and destitute streets had been atrocious, here in the true slums, it was one step away from starvation and death. Lean shanties were constructed in hollow nooks along the rugged passageways, and huge chasms tore through areas, all without wall or rail to prevent an untimely fall. Glowing copper eyes stared out from the darker crevices, children mostly, hiding while their parents traveled the jagged roads further inward.
The sound of pick on stone rose from the chasms, individual strikes overlapping until it was simply a ringing chorus from the earth's wound. Here and there, the stone was open enough to expose crystalline pillars that filled their area with soft, elemental light.
The bones of Ahkestria, she thought. And they are sent down to pick at what remains.
Zara had reached the mines. The number of guards had increased from above, sent to corral and police the miners most likely. But where she had expected to see them indolently drinking or smoking their long pipes while the miners toiled, instead Zara saw Humans in dark mail with a single golden pauldron, fashioned to resemble flames.
Disciples of the Temple? What are they doing here? Zara stood, cloaked in shadow and her own power, careful to keep out of their sight. They're rounding up the Yttins?
The Disciples had commandeered the soldiers-turned guards, and using them slowly gathered up the miners from their huts. More filtered up from the chasms, marching behind a long line of nervous Yttins, Dwarves, Orcs, and Goblins. Zara read fear and confusion in their unguarded Spiritsin fact it was so vibrant it was all she could hear for a moment. It came from everywhere, throughout her Affinity's range.
What is going on?
It reminded her of another time, in a city by the Ending Sea, where the Pathless once reigned. Of cold nights hiding in woodsheds while patrols hunted for her family, all of them deemed heretics and anathema to the faith. Zara hissed, her breath sharp between her pointed teeth, and forced herself to relax. Shoulders came down, breathing slowed, and she unclenched her fists to find small crescent wounds pressed into her palm.
Find Isla. Then discover what is going on, she told herself. Go.
There was another Mark across the street, between two boulders. She stepped across the path, walking behind one of the Disciples as they passed. She was tempted to reach out...but Zara had control of her emotions once more. She let the Disciples pass without interferring. At the other side, she slipped between the boulders, and engaged the Mark.
The softest song yet filled her ears, pointing her senses in the final direction. The space beyond the boulder was a switchback path that led Zara further down the nearest chasm. She followed it, stepping carefully. The path was well trodden, which spoke to Isla interacting often with the locals, but there were a few cracks and scars in the stones that told a tale of violence. She sped up her pace.
After the fourth switchback, Zara rounded a corner and found a wide ledge dominated by two large stone buildings. They were crude structures and very old, little more than caves with a bit of edifice carved out of them. That wasn't was made her draw up short, however, nor what made her pulse her illusory magics a touch harder.
The door to the dwelling had been kicked in, and pieces of paper and pottery were strew about the ledge. Faintly, she could hear the low sound of talking.
Someone is inside. Several someones, all around the Journeyman Tier. Zara narrowed her eyes, and slowly edged forward.
"Explain."
The moment the Grandmaster spoke, a compulsion reached up and tried to seize Felix. With an annoyed grunt, he swatted it away, his Willpower too much for the working. However, his Manasight followed the tendrils of magic that spread upward from the polished flooring beneath them all. An array, carved beneath their feet, and he had missed it in the plethora of interference. The humming of crystals, the shimmer of the muffle ward, the various protections that simmered just beneath the council members' benches. All of it was ringing in Felix's ears.
The array felt very familiar but also utterly foreign, and it took him a second to realize why. The pitch and pattern of its faint song sounded like his Deception Skill...but inverted.
It's a circle of fucking truth, he thought.
Rage kindled in Felix's chest as the wispy tendrils reached out and sunk into the Spirits of his friendsrage and fear. No matter how personally powerful Felix had gotten, he doubted he could go toe to toe with a Grandmaster. He couldn't risk threatening the guy, not overtly.
But the array would not stand.
Cardinal Flame!
Chthonic Tribute!
Felix fixed his attention solely on the truth-compulsion array and sank his metaphorical fangs into it. It resisted him, but his Intent and Willpower were sharpened by adversity and monsters greater than some scrawled lines in stone.
"The Pal" Atar started, but Felix put a restraining hand on the man's shoulder. The array pulsed, once, and then its power vanished into Felix's channels. Atar sagged, like his strings had been cut; he looked at Felix with fear and sudden relief. Felix nodded and stepped forward.
"I will answer your questions," he said.
Looks rippled across the others, but the Grandmaster merely narrowed his eyes. "Very well. My former apprentice spoke of Paladins seeking to destroy my city. Explain this."
His city, huh? Felix nodded. "In our journeys here, we have encountered a number of the Paladins of the Pathless. Most notably were the forces that hold the Caleph Pass. Several battalions, we were told, were on their way to your city."
The Grandmaster drummed his fingers across the top of his desk. Felix could feel nothing from the grey-skinned man, but the others around him were giving him something. It was hard to parse in all of the magical interference, though. "And you have seen these forces around Ahkestria?" he asked.
"Our approach to your city was underground, so we did not see the area closest to it," Felix explained.
"Yes, the Disciple mentioned that you used the Ancients Causeways. How did you gain access to them?" One of the other MastersLlathynspoke up. Felix's Eye could see their name, but the rest of their information was blank, much as the rest. His newly Tempered Voracious Eye could maybe rip through their resistance, but now wasn't the time to provoke anyone. "The Causeways were sealed, and for good reason."
"We found our way through a breach. It was an alternative to the constant storms and attacks by undead," Felix lied.
Deception is level 30!
"Damnable storms. And those breaches should have been repaired years ago, Sig," the Master said, his ruddy face flushing further.
"The undead are an eternal problem of the Expanse. It is the price we pay for the failures of our past," the Grandmaster said, and the round-faced Llathyn pressed his lips closed.
What failures? Felix thought.
"Regardless, the Causeways are not to be traversed. For that alone this Council should censor you, but the addition of lying about an invasion of Paladins that you cannot even confirm to have seen..."
"Lying?" Atar said. He stepped up, despite Evie's grip on his robes. "Grandmaster Kel'lyv, I would not lie to you!"
The grey-skinned mage furrowed his brows, and Felix swore that the entire room warmed by several degrees. "Do you think me a fool, Atar V'as? The Hierocracy has never invaded our lands. We have not enough to tempt them, nor is the Expanse hospitable to their armies. To bring even one battalion into the sands is an endeavor that they cannot afford, least of all now, with an insurgent Territory in their midst." The last was said with a sneer. "What proof do you offer me of these Paladins and their hostile intent?"
"I am a Seer."
Deception is level 31!
The words tumbled from his mouth before he could consider them overmuch, but it was a fair gamble. According to Zara, few people knew how Seers operated, except that they "read the near future" and could scry distant places. Felix looked into the shocked faces of the Council, their expressions varying from smug disbelief to worry. The last struck him, but he couldn't afford to stop once he started talking. "I have had a vision of the Paladins of the Pathless attacking the city of Ahkestria. In it, they are attempting to breach the storm around your city. There were many hundreds of them, all come here, for you."
Deception is level 32!
"You lie," said a female Master. Her hair was a bright, fiery red streaked liberally with white. "None have breached our storm since its raising. None can."
"They will," Felix insisted. He hadn't seen this during the ritual, but he knew it to be true. The Unbound was too tempting a target. "I don't know how, but they will."
"A Seer is a rare thing," Grandmaster Kel'lyv said slowly. "A combination of Skills and Titles that can only come about through years of concerted effort. How did you come to work for your master, this Autarch?"
"We've been together all my life," Felix replied honestly.
Deception is level 33!
"Disciple. Is this true?" the red-haired Master asked. Fiammetta stepped forward nervously, casting a strange look at Felix.
"I-I cannot say if he is a Seer. But I know him to be a powerful mage," she said, licking her lips nervously. "I personally witnessed him hold back a horde of undead in the Causeways for a span of time. There were at least five hundred of them, if not more. Representative Veil did this alone."
That gave the Council pause, and even the Grandmaster graced Felix with a look of curiosity and interest. Then, without warning, a secondary array activated around their benches and a curtain of silence and distorted air descended upon the Masters.
"What's happening?" Evie asked.
"They are conferring," Fiammetta said, her voice a little shaky. "They-they will continue their discussion momentarily."
"Discussion," Evie snorted. "This is a tribunal. I've been in one before, I know what it looks like."
Atar signed.
Evie pressed her mouth closed, but wasn't happy about it.
Felix signed, using his body to block view of their communication.
Seer?> Vess asked, eyebrow raised.
Felix signed, surreptitiously.
Atar gestured.
Evie said, and she sounded disappointed.
Felix warned. Seconds later, the Masters' privacy screen dropped and Felix blinked in surprise. While the area had been obscured, a number of other figures had entered, all of them women and wearing robes of orange, white, and gold.
"Matrons," Fiammetta uttered in surprise. She executed a low bow, almost prostrating herself.
"Stand, Disiciple. We are here as a formality," said a women with silver-white hair and an unlined, almost ageless face. "This threat to the city is too great to not take seriously."
"Then you believe us?" Felix asked. "We would not press the issue if it were not a real concern. The people of your city"
"Shall be protected, Representative Veil. Do not doubt that," the Grandmaster snapped. The heat that had faded returned again as the man gave off waves of Mana vapor into the air around him. "Our people have faced a great many crises in my time here. From famine to civil unrest to dangerous, wild beasts. All of them were surmounted. Now the Continent is undergoing a new period of unrest. There is conflict in the Ghreldan Hills, as always, but also the provinces to the East and to the South. Rumors of larger and more vicious monster hordes appearing within civilized lands. And to the distant Northwest, there is tell of a Beast turned Man that ate half of a frontier town. Of your master, this Autarch of Nagast."
A ripple of disquiet spread from Felix's chest. He couldn't place it, because it wasn't from the emotions of the Masters or the Matrons. They had returned to being solid walls of control.
"This Felix Nevarre is a puzzle, Representative Veil, and your presence and potency offers us no clues to its solution. Why have you come to us? To warn us out of the goodness of your heart? Or do you carry dire intentions of your own?" Kel'lyv bared his teeth, bright white against his gray skin.
"Dire? We came to warn you, yes, but also to establish relations. We had hoped to seek trade agreements" Felix's voice was cut off by a sharp, bitter laugh from the Grandmaster.
"I am not a fool, Veil. Perhaps your Nagast has treasures to trade, and perhaps not, but to come so far from your borders for that? There is more to you than can be accounted for." Kel'lyv gripped the arms of his crystal throne. "Why would a man of honest intentions hide themselves? How are you blocking our Analyze, Veil? If you intend no dishonesty, then unveil yourself to us."
The sound ground against Felix's senses, a disturbance that rode sideways across the discordant hum of so many powerful Skills, arrays, and crystalline Mana. He tried to respond to the Grandmaster's intimations, but the noise was like a burr catching as his thoughts, pulling at him. Insistent.
"It matters not what secrets this Autarch chooses to hide, or what his Representative deigns to tell us. We know what must be done," said the silver-haired Matron. "The city is in danger. The Highest Flame dwindles, and we've one chance at atonement. You know this, Sig'nyh. Let us do what you have called us here to do."
"What?" Felix asked. His friends shifted, moving up behind him. "What is she talking about?"
"The Highest Flame is dwindling?" Atar asked. "That's insane!"
An array burst to life beneath their feet, and this one was many times more complex than the simple truth-compulsion. Felix and his friends were grabbed by tendrils of dire force, all of them yanked to their knees.
"The Highest Flame is dying, Representative Veil," the Grandmaster said. He stood from his throne and gestured. Doors at the far end of the chamber boomed open, and the sound of booted feet filled the air. "The Paladins of the Pathless, however, have offered a brilliant solution."
Blood-red armor stomped into view, and a man at the lead with bright yellow eyes , a scar across his chin, and a sunburst at his breast.
"High Justiciar Haim, just in time. I believe I have several more volunteers for the ritual. I believe a Seer would prove quite significant."
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