Zalia sat waiting in the council room as murmurs and chatter filled the space. They were waiting for a final civilian member to turn up as they couldn’t be found. She could see that the waiting was making Faian anxious as she probably wanted to get underway as soon as possible.
The council room seemed a lot more packed than she was expecting, with a lot more people fitting into the space than the twenty-two council members. There were various scribes and attendants whose jobs were to record and hold relevant information or to be sent to obtain needed items. In addition to them, there was the group Zalia sat amongst. This seating contained herself, Ember, Aylie, Hildebrandt, Larel and a dozen or so other people, a large majority of them Bathar. Boreal and Lumen were also nearby, though both too big to sit in the chairs. She knew that Ro would be joining them once the meeting started as well.
A man came up and said something to Faian, who then gestured to the civilian seated to the council, the counterpart to her own position. They walked over and began whispering back and forth in a quick manner. After a few words, the civilian seated nodded and Faian walked over to one of the people at the edge of the room. A few more words were passed before Faian turned to the room and raised her hands and called for order. After a few seconds, everyone quieted.
“Welcome everyone and sorry for the delay. Seated Jish and I have decided that we shall start this emergency meeting without the presence of Councilman Tillman. His associate, Hav, will be filling in for him during this meeting, an accommodation previously agreed to under the rulings of council, emergency meeting subsection.”
No one argued against her proclamation as everyone took their places. There were twenty seats divided into two half-circle sections facing each other towards the centre of the room, with a large circular space in the middle with a step-up for speaking members. Behind each set of ten wooden seats was a higher-up stone seat in which Faian and Seated Jish took their places.
As soon as everyone was in their place, Faian stood up and went to the centre of the council members, stepping up on the raised section.
“I have called this emergency meeting after receiving some troubling news from a noble amongst our nation. Zalia, whom all of you know as the woman who was integral in saving Endaria, undertook a journey to the Astar lands. There, she found one of their towns amongst a mist in which hundreds of Endarians were held captive, used as slaves. During this infiltration, members of her family were caught, then promptly freed with… due diligence. In this attack on the Astar, many of the other slaves held in that town were freed from their bonds and have been brought back here.”
There was a stunned silence amongst the council members as Faian spoke, not even a whisper to be heard.
“The information gathered in this mission has brought upon us questions that require answers. Our main point of talk this day is what we must do in retaliation for the hundreds of years the Astar have been secretly taking away our people, the high ranked amongst us, for use as labour. We must also discuss how we plan to defend ourselves from such future incursions.”
This finally caused an outburst of chatter as council members spoke over one another to ask more of Faian. She waited patiently as they spoke, obviously not of a mind to reward their disorderly manner.
Zalia had expected a disciplined council of members who made their points with order, yet this reminded her more of the type of politics that happened back in her old world.
The abrupt chaos of voices eventually silenced as Faian waited with hands raised.
“Please, we must work through this with order. We shall start with the easier decision. What is it that we shall do about their continued abduction of our people? Zalia is here with us today and can answer some questions and even has something that may help in this regard, if you will allow her to speak?”
Zalia jumped, not realising that Faian had been expecting her to talk in front of the council but a vote was cast and they agreed to let her speak. Trying to hide her anxiety, she stood and stepped onto the raised section as Faian took her seat once more.
“Um, thank you for letting me speak today.”
She looked around at the circle of eyes, swallowing her nervousness.
“The Astar are powerful wielders of spatial magic. Each member of their race is capable of using this type of magic from my experience, which raises both an issue and an obvious path to a solution. My town of Nature’s Reclaim and the city we stand in both now have anti-teleportation safeguards in place. This is an important protection but one we will need to implement across Endaria. We should also look to providing individuals with this type of protection.”
At this, she took one of the armbands she had been making out of her vault and held it up for everyone to see.
“This is a temporary solution I have designed for the problem, a one-use armband that a wearer can push a little bit of magic into to activate. It stops an instance of teleportation and gives the wearer some time to react to the Astar. Unfortunately, it isn’t super effective, as the Astar are quick with their magic. I fear if we rely on these they shall find a way around them quickly.”
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As she arrived at the end of her speech, questions began flooding in from the people around her.
“How many of these armbands can you make each day?”
“Who authorised you to go into the Astar lands?”
“How did you free the people from the Astar town?”
“Who gave you the right to start a war on our behalf?”
At that question, Zalia spun to face the speaker.
“Start a war? Did you not hear what Faian said? They have been taking the Endarian people for hundreds of years. What do you want to do, sit around and wait for them to take you next? What about Hildebrandt or Larel. I might have been the catalyst in this reaction, but they have been treating your nation as cattle since your nation has been around for anyone knows, and will continue to do so as long as we don’t do something!”
At the words, Zalia realised how strongly she felt about this. She had been pushing the problem to the back of her mind ever since she had found out about it, not wanting to think about the thousands of people taken by the Astar, even people she knew. Matthias had probably been taken by them, Indis may have been taken by them. Maybe, deep down, she had gone to the Astar lands specifically to bring the problem to the nation’s attention, front and centre.
“Before I left to scout the Astar lands, a group of Astar showed up at my town and tried to take me. Two Astar have already fucking abducted me once. If you want to ignore the problem and sit here, do so, but I’m not being a part of it.”
She left the centre of the chamber and considered leaving the room entirely, before taking her seat at the edges once more.
The council chamber was in silence once more and Faian took the centre.
“Now that Zalia has shown you a possible path to a defence against the Astar, and perhaps shown you the seriousness of the matter at hand today, we shall move on to the next question at hand. Before we do so however, I urge you, once this meeting is done, we must find ways to counter the Astar’s use of this powerful spatial magic.”
Zalia started to regret her outburst, just a little, though not because of the impact it had on the council members. She had just been thinking about how little order and control the members had as shown by their constant yelling of questions, yet the nervousness and pressure of the situation had gotten to her quickly.
Faian kept speaking.
“Alright, our next point today is to decide whether we should consider this as war and what we should do about the problem. I think we can agree that simply hiding in our cities is not enough.”
What followed was chaotic argument about whether to consider the Astar’s actions worthy of war or not. There were people on both the civilian and military side of the council that argued against considering it war, the years of fighting against the king and the invasion of Endaria still fresh on their minds. Eventually, when arguments began to repeat and no progress was being made, a vote was called. It was close, but it was decided that they were officially at war with the Astar, with eleven for it and nine against. Neither Seated Faian or Seated Jish got votes unless there was a tie.
Zalia could see that they held power in other ways, however. Faian was running this meeting, being the one who called it, which meant she got to decide on which matters were voted for and when things would move on. Jish was barely involved in the meeting at all however, only adding bits and pieces to the conversation.
Once this decision was made, they moved on to what would be done.
Here, Jish started to contribute more and it was decided that teams from the Morning’s Shade would be sent to discover more about the Astar. They now knew where at least one of the Astar towns were and might be able to find more out that way. Faian informed them all that one of the Astar cities was underground, information Zalia had shared with her.
It was also decided that invasion would wait until they gathered more information. They did agree, however, that attacking some of the Astar cities would be needed eventually. Their options in stopping the Astar actions were to destroy them entirely, a course of action that no one seemed particularly enthusiastic about, or to force the Astar into a treaty by way of overwhelming force. The issue was that they didn’t know if they would be able to do either of those things.
A recess was finally called after what felt like four or five hours to Zalia. Larel immediately sought her out and started hounding her for answers.
“When did this all happen?” she asked.
“A few days ago.”
“And-”
Zalia interrupted her with a raised hand.
“Larel please, if you do want to know what happened, both Hildebrandt and Faian know.”
She saw Faian walking up to them as she said this and turned to greet her.
“Zalia, I’m sorry about that. I appreciate you standing up to talk anyway.”
She shrugged.
“Probably should have expected it.”
Faian nodded approvingly.
“Either way, you’re free to go now. There will be a lot of endless argument now and I’m sure you have better things to do.”
That brought a smile to Zalia’s face. She hadn’t been looking forward to more of the council meeting.
“Thanks, I appreciate it.”
“No, thank you.”
As Zalia began to walk away with her family, Faian called out.
“Oh, and please don’t go starting any more wars, would you?”
Zalia laughed.
“Oh, don’t worry. I’m quite done causing problems I think.”
At that moment, a bloodied man came to a stumbling stop at the door to the castle, guards chasing after him.