“What’s going on?” Yuriko muttered. She spread her perception aura, careful to keep it from directly touching anyone, and pushed all the way to her limits. But a hundred and seventy paces still put her reach into the midst of the crowd, so she couldn’t see anything. She heard murmurs about a ‘Scions of Virtalla’ as well as a rally, a meeting, a fight, and other things.
“Looks like a political mess,” Juliette said.
“It’s a scheduled rally by the Scions of Virtalla, Lady Juliette,” the maid, Lucia, said. “I apologise, my lady, I did not expect the attendees to be this many.”
“They’re in the way,” Juliette said peevishly.
“We could always fly over the street,” Yuriko said.
“Aerial travel is restricted because of the upcoming elections, professor,” Lucia interjected. “We can go through the side roads?”
“Let’s do that,” Yuriko agreed.
While they weren’t within the crowd quite yet, people had come up behind them and pushed into her personal space. She used her Animakinesis to subtly push back and followed the maid towards an alley. They slipped in easily enough, and Lucia strode confidently ahead.
Yuriko’s perception sank into the cobblestones and deeper into the earth. She found sewers just underneath, following the main roads. The ones in the alley were smaller and narrower, but mostly dry with a layer of sludge and moss on the sides. The sewers were barely large enough to stand in, and the ones in the alleys were just big enough for cats and rats. Oh, there was a rat that skittered across the alley and dove into a sewer grate.
Deciding to practice, Yuriko created a sunblade right in the middle of the alley-sewer. The heat was contained, but her actual purpose was to burn the moss and lichen off the sides. The sunblade didn’t have to touch the walls, and even a few inches away, the Radiant heat was more than enough to scour it. Still, it was a delicate balance splitting her consciousness that way. Ah, she didn’t stop with just one sunblade but made a full hundred spread out across her reach. And much as she detested vermin… no, she burnt the sewer rats to ashes. Nope! No rats!
Using the sunblades that way didn’t conform to the Ennoia of Radiant Flying Swords, so she had to manually direct each one. The sewer tunnels weren’t uniform or straight, so there was a real risk of puncturing and damaging them if she grew careless. As she followed behind Lucia, she listened idly to the chatter, while continuing her training.
However, half an hour later, her sunblades found something. The sewer line unexpectedly opened into a larger chamber, and there were clear signs that it was not part of the original structures. For one thing, it was shored up with a different cut of stone, and for another, it had a camouflaged door. Yuriko cast Tremorsense through the sunblade and found that the chamber connected to a cellar underneath one of the nondescript houses that was a couple of streets over. And the spell returned the impression of a table, chairs, and storage shelves. There was also a barrel of swords set next to the door, and a crate of disparate metal contraptions.
Somebody smuggling or a secret hideaway?
Shrugging to herself, Yuriko retracted her sunblade and moved on. Oddly enough, she found a nearly identical copy of the underground cellar a dozen blocks away. It had the same assortment of things, and she was sure that the shelves had containers filled with bullets in them. She couldn’t get a more accurate read from Tremorsense and she wasn’t about to break into someone’s property to be nosy.
The crowds thinned as they exited the southern district. Yuriko recalled the shape of the city, which had the overall shape of a peach blossom. It had a circular central district and five petals, which were the five districts surrounding it. The petals were self-sufficient areas each with their own markets, schools, residential, and commercial. Only the northern district was a specialised industrial area, and included foundries, refineries, and tanneries, mostly the dirty and noisy industries according to Juliette. The clothiers, weavers, seamstresses, and jewellers were distributed among the other four districts. Well, they were supposed to be self-contained, but the dark-haired student also said that each district was also well-known for a particular craft or speciality.
They had entered the southwestern district but were making their way closer to the center, and the west petal, where the best seamstresses were. The petals were divided from each other with a low wall, roughly a couple of paces high. The wall followed the shape of each petal, which emphasised how much the city resembled a peach blossom, and it was really nothing more than an elevated walkway, come to think of it. There were stairs for pedestrians to climb up, and the sides of the walls actually had stalls for vendors and merchants. The internal walls had gaps for the major thoroughfares, but each section was at least several hundred paces long. The alley they followed to escape the rally eventually led to one of the stairs and they crossed the ten pace wide wall soon after. At this point, Yuriko retracted her sunblades despite finding a couple more cellars.
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She debated whether to continue her training, but it had already taken a couple of hours to walk across the southwestern petal. She was fine with this much exertion, but the three other ladies weren’t. Lucia was breathing heavily and with the warm weather, her face was dripping with sweat. She pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed her forehead, continuing to do so while they walked. Sofia and Juliette were similarly perspiring, though after the last trimester of heavy physical training, they were in far better shape. Ryoko was quite fit, but even she had a sheen of sweat covering her brow.
“How come you’re dry as a bone?” Sofia poked Yuriko’s side and complained.
“Hmmm? What do you mean?”
“You aren’t bothered by the heat?” It was already close to noon, and if their schedule hadn’t been disrupted, they would be having lunch now.
“Because I’m not,” Yuriko said with a laugh. “An easy walk such as this doesn’t even register.” She shrugged. “Maybe we should fly instead?”
“The main roads seem to be clear, my ladies,” Lucia interrupted. “We can hire a coach to bring us to Hafton Court now.”
“Go ahead,” Yuriko said and the maid bowed and hurried to the main road. Yuriko and the other three followed behind her, and once they left the alleys, they waited near a peach tree that still had some blossoms clinging to its leaves. Sofia and Juliette took a seat on a bench while Yuriko observed the people passing by.
Pedestrians glanced at the three of them every so often. There was a cafe across the street with an al fresco setting. Yuriko’s eyes were riveted to a dark chocolate cake slice that was being served to a young mother and her child. Her nostrils flared and her perception spread out. The divine scent made her toes curl and she took a step towards the cafe, and was brought up short when Sofia asked, “Yuriko, where are you going? Lucia’s there with the coach.”
Sure enough, the maid had quickly flagged down a ride. Yuriko swallowed and gazed longingly at the cake that the little girl was happily devouring. The smear of chocolate across her mouth and cheeks provoked outrage. How dare she waste that divine sweet! Yuriko would never let any droplet escape her tongue!
“Come on! What are you looking at?” Juliette tugged at Yuriko’s sleeve and with a supreme force of Will, Yuriko wrenched her gaze, and her perception from the chocolate.
“Nothing,” she muttered sourly as she climbed on board the coach. The thing had no roof and the four of them fit snugly in the vehicle. The driver tapped the horse with the reins and prodded the animal to move.
Yuriko sighed again and shut her eyes. Chocolate!
The name of the cafe…Merry Droplets! She’ll be back, and she’ll clean out their inventory!
A few minutes later, they arrived at the court. Yuriko only took a passing interest in it, her mind occupied by chocolate. Truffles, cake, candies? There were a few stores in Nirlith that carried chocolate, and much as she loved the confection, she only allowed herself to indulge once in a while. Plus, it cost nearly half a gold to buy a box of truffles. She only got ten golds a week, and even with the two Chaos Lords’ salaries, that didn’t mean she could blow all of their coins to luxuries.
Hmm, she needed more gold, didn’t she? She didn’t want to touch the remaining gold marks from back home though… Ah well, it's the Season of Fire so she could delve some Chaos Founts or go back to the Golden Field and harvest more gold or elemental cores. There were a lot of ways to feed her chocolate passion!
She absently followed the other four women to a seamstress. She left the details to Ryoko and obediently went to the fitting room.
“Such a beautiful figure and skin!” the seamstress, Madame Romero, said. “I must bring my best, you must wear it for the season! Nothing else will do justice to your beauty!” the middle-aged woman gushed, while Yuriko simply nodded along.
The dress design that was eventually offered to her was quite understated. It was a pure white dress that fell just past her knees. It was paired with open-toed shoes, and she wasn’t to wear any tights or stockings underneath. The neckline exposed her clavicles and her shoulders, as well as the upper part of her back. It had short sleeves, too, but the neckline was modest. It came with a thin silk shawl, pale blue with pearls sewn on the edges.
“Wear gold bracelets, necklace, and earrings with these, dear. Oh! Your ear isn’t pierced. Would you like to have it done?”
Pierced ears? Yuriko blinked as she noted that the woman, as well as most of the women in Virtalla, had jewellery sticking in their earlobes. Juliette didn’t and neither did Sofia, but the maid did. There were brass studs through her ear and were in no way in the shape of a ring. Besides, Yuriko didn’t think anything the madame had would pierce her skin.
“No, thank you.”
“Oh, alright, but they would have looked nice. How about a nice tiara, hmmm? A little sparkle would be nice, but I guess any kind of gem would be overshadowed by you anyway,” Madame Romero babbled.
It took about an hour for her to finish Yuriko’s measurements and design, then the woman had to go through with Sofia. Yuriko said, “I’ll wander around and meet you ladies back in the estate tonight.”
“Oh, alright,” Juliette said. Ryoko simply nodded and sat in the waiting room. It wouldn’t take too long to finish the dress since the seamstress had many base dresses on-hand.
Yuriko wandered out of the place and decided to return to Merry Droplets to make good on her promise. The main road towards the edge of the west petal had been mostly free of traffic on their way to the seamstress, but by the time she was headed back, it seemed that the people walking had multiplied to the point that they practically blocked vehicular traffic. There was a muted buzz, but then, a chant suddenly began.
“Virtalla for Virtallans! Take back our city. Vote for the Scions!”
The crowd parted for a large group of men and women clad in the same kind of overcoat. It was buttoned to the side, and at the centre was an elaborate motif of a peach blossom. Despite the heat and the sheen of sweat covering their faces, each marcher’s coat was closed all the way to the neck. They were yelling their slogans and waving their arms. Some were carrying large signs which either had the same peach blossom motif or the words they were chanting written on them.
The paraders were yelling fiercely, but most of the bystanders were looking at them with expressions of disdain, or apathy. Those, in turn, were mirrored by expressions of anger and self-righteousness.
It all felt as if this were a Chaos Fount about to explode.