“Did any of you leave something behind in the rooms we’ve been given?” I asked my companions, as we made our way down-hill, ignoring the Elder’s apprentice who was still moving with us. Part of me wanted to inquire why but given that I had been ignoring her the whole time, I decided to simply continue doing so. If she wanted to make sure we actually were leaving, she was welcome to do so, I had no plans to stick around. Not with the awkward situation Dura Firebringer hat put me in, with her strange actions.
“We have our things with us.” Adra replied, after a short look at Rai. The look on her face, however, told me that she wanted to talk, later. Something I could understand, after all I had managed to get us kicked out of yet another settlement, just that I thought my Outsider-Trait had nothing to do with it, at least this time.
“Good.” I nodded, mostly to myself. Just before I wanted to tell the others that we would just leave, knowing that neither Sigmir nor I had left anything in our room, Lenore pushed a thought through our connection.
“Are you certain that you didn’t leave any hairs in the room? Remember what the Firemage near Kolyug managed to do with hair that was left behind after you got burned?” she asked, making me mentally stop for a moment. I didn’t think Dura Firebringer would go out of her way to strike at me from a distance, it didn’t seem to be her style, but at the same time, I wasn’t willing to risk things on a hunch.
“No, I’m not certain.” I admitted over our connection, before continuing out loud. “I will have to swing by our room for a few minutes, then we can leave this place. After all, it seems we already have overstayed our welcome.” I snarked, giving a side-eye to the orc next to us. As I spoke, I felt Sigmir’s hand tense in mine for a moment, before relaxing again, simply moving next to me.
As we continued moving through town, a part of me expected the atmosphere to instantly shift around us, the change in relations from honoured guest to kicked out pest instantly communicated, as it would have been in other games, but no, nothing seemed to have changed just yet. Some of the orcs around us still regarded us with a bit of hostility, as they had before, some looked at us with curiosity and again others, as if they were measuring us, me in particular. The mixed reaction made me wonder about the effect of a general reputation, as described in one of the character-windows, how did it mesh with individual perception? Would someone we saved suddenly dislike us just because we had a bad reputation with the faction they were a part of? Or would individual perception overwrite the institutional one? How could there even be an “institutional reputation”, how could a town have an opinion on someone? Only the individual people inside could hold that opinion, each flavoured with their own biases and prejudices.
And that was on a small-scale, where things could be somewhat seen as impacting individuals. If I helped some people in a town, they might talk to their neighbours, and so on, giving me a positive reputation and spreading it. That meshed with the reputation-system. But on a larger scale, say, a nation-wide reputation? Could that even work? Certainly not in the same manner I had originally thought it might, with quests simply filling a bar, things were, as it seemed to be with everything, much more complicated.
Maybe there were tiers to the system, so to speak. So far, I had only dealt with the lowest tier, or maybe the lowest two tiers, with individuals and independent settlements. That was, other than my dealings with the Centaurs, but for some reason, those were not in my social-tab, maybe due to the fact that I hadn’t openly dealt with them, only by passing through. But if there were more tiers, possibly hidden ones, like a regional tier that would give you an indication how far your reputation had spread in a region and whether it was positive or not, or the same concept for a national or, at the highest level, even an international tier. By that logic, the Grandmother would have a regional reputation in the North, her name known to most people, along with some basic information. In the Bright Hollow, there might be one or two people who had heard the name but most Orcs would never have heard of her. Granted, the distance between Bright Hollow and Neyto was measured in the thousands of kilometers and it had taken us multiple months to make the journey, making it somewhat understandable, but still. If a being as powerful as the Grandmother hadn’t been able to achieve a wide-spread reputation, how would I fare?
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Musings like that occupied my mind, until we reached the guest-house, our silently disapproving shadow still with us. We all entered together and, as we moved through the front-room, one of the housekeepers noticed us. It was the same, highly pregnant, woman that had helped us the evening before, Sari.
“Greetings, honoured guests.” she greeted, only to be cut off by Apprentice Klenda.
“They are no longer guests, certainly not honoured ones.” she snarked, trying to look down on me.
“Indeed, due to some unfortunate circumstances, our visit has to be cut short. We will get our things, before we leave.” I ignored the air of superiority the apprentice tried to project and gave Sari a polite, but indifferent smile. She looked just confused at the sudden turn of events, while Klenda bristled at my explanation.
Ignoring her again, we moved up the stairs, entering the rooms we had been given. There, I was presented with a small conundrum. I knew what I wanted to accomplish, destroy anything that might be used to form a connection with me, especially strands of my hair. My “Magical Hair”-Trait would make that an excellent conduit to strike at me, something I wanted to avoid. The thought of suddenly getting burned by a spirit, conjured hundreds of kilometers away and sent to haunt me was not one I enjoyed. But how could I go about destroying such a connection, without simply destroying the bed and everything else within the room?
“I have an idea.” Lenore told me, before I felt her push out of her Hallow. Moments later, she sat on my shoulder, sharing in images what she had in mind, a combination of Death and Darkness-magic, trying to simply purge anything that was still magical within the room, anything but us, of course.
I had no idea if the concept of Death-Magic could be applied to something akin to the Magic-Rune of my Darkness-Magic, but it seemed Lenore thought so. It would have to be used in concert by both of us, with me providing the targeting, using Darkness-Magic while Lenore would conjure up the needed Death-Magic.
Reaching out, I took hold of the shadows lingering in the corners of the room and near the walls, filling them with my power. Once they were mine, I spread them, blanketing the entire room in Darkness while focusing on the rune representing Magic, the ability to change the world, in my mind. Everything magical, everything connected to the Astral, within the shadows was my target. Once I had that image fixed within my mind, I gave Lenore a gentle prod, feeling her mind connect with my own, taking the offered information.
From there, things got relatively simple. I could feel her shift, spreading her wings, and lifted my other arm, letting my magic pool out of me, into the spell she was casting. Once again, I was mostly providing assistance to her, giving her power and information, while she provided the actual spell-concept.
A simple concept, one that simply tried to flood everything with Death-Magic, overwhelming anything that might be used to connect to the realm of the living, hopefully erasing any potential link to me. Visually, it looked quite impressive, the dark Shadows I had conjured up turning grey and hazy, as if there was an invisible wind shifting them around.
It only lasted mere moments, not even half a minute, but in those scant seconds, we pumped almost half our Astral Power into the room, thoroughly decontaminating it in the process. Nothing living was left within, hopefully that was enough to make sure nothing could be used against me.
“Hopefully that was enough.” I muttered, feeling a wave of tiredness hit me. Death-Magic took a toll on me, even if I only had helped with the spell.
“We will have to work on that one. Maybe we can find a way to use the Astral River to trace and destroy links to you.” Lenore replied, before shifting back into her Hallow. She was as exhausted as I, despite the fact that she had borne the brunt of the magical work. But then, her affinity for Death-Magic was quite a bit higher than mine, mine only a reflection of hers.
“Yes, I agree. But for now, let’s get out of here.” I nodded, before walking out the door, a silent Sigmir still in tow.