Tala and Rane didn’t talk much on their way to Brand’s restaurant to meet up with Lyn and Kannis for lunch.

Tala knew that she was still considering what the little fox-man had said, and she assumed that Rane was as well.

Nothing really came from her further contemplations, but she felt like she had helped them to set more deeply into her own mind, if nothing else.

When they were nearly to the place, Tala glanced up at Rane. “What are you thinking about?”

He looked back and gave a little smile. “Aside from trying to wrap my head around all that… master Lisa said? I half expected you to invite him to Irondale. I am a bit curious as to why you didn’t.”

Tala stopped dead.

Thankfully, they were walking to one side of the street, so that didn’t cause any sort of disruption to the flow of traffic. “Tala? Are you alright?”

Tala shook her head. “Oh, I feel like an idiot. I didn’t even consider that. That’s a brilliant idea, Rane.”

She grinned widely up at Rane. Then, she almost turned around and went back right away, but she had a thought before she could. Alat, we can grant Lisa access to things in the Archive, right?

-Yes we can.-

Please send him a note and grant some basic information on the sanctum and Irondale. See if he’s at all interested.

-Will do.-

“Thank you, Rane. That was an excellent idea.” She started walking again, and he easily kept pace with her.

“I’m glad that I could help. I would have mentioned it earlier, but I assumed that you were just waiting for the right time or that you’d decided against making the offer.”

“That’s kind of you, but you don’t need to worry. If you have an idea, I’d love to hear it.” She smiled his way, and he smiled in return.

“Alright, then.” He bumped her lightly as they continued on, bringing a small smile to her lips.

It only took another few minutes to reach the restaurant, and they both stopped in their tracks when they came around the corner and saw it.

It was huge, taking nearly a quarter block, and while it wasn’t gaudy, it did grab the attention of passersby.

It was whitewashed, a very noticeable white when compared to the more muted tones of the buildings around it. Additionally, a large sign was easily visible simply containing the words: ‘Good Food—Great Fights—All Day Long’.

Tala gaped, and Rane started to laugh.

Kannis and Lyn were already waiting for them just to one side of the entrance, and it was good that they were off to the side. There was an almost constant flow of people both into and out of the restaurant. There were gaps, but it was obvious that the place was popular.

That did make sense given the hour. It was almost exactly noon, and so it was reasonable for people to have been eating both right before this and to be entering in order to eat within the next hour.

Tala pushed on the back of Rane’s arm to get him moving as she stepped forward to cross the street to where their friends were waiting.

Lyn was smiling, and Kannis was actively chuckling when they walked up. It was the mageling who spoke first, “I assume that this is your first time here?”

Tala nodded even as Rane responded, “Yeah, at least since the expansion.”

Lyn’s smile grew at that. “Well, you’re in for an experience.”

They all walked in together, getting a bit surrounded by the flow of people entering just ahead of and behind them.

Rane gawked around at the inside.

Tala couldn’t see very much more than the people who surrounded them. She could see with her threefold sight, but that could be annoying to piece together, and she just wanted to look with her own eyes.

Rust this. She grew shoes on her feet then added to the soles of her shoes with every step, creating a lattice of iron to give her shoes platforms to lift her up as she continued forward. Thus, she looked to be walking up stairs until she was of a height with Rane.

It was a little awkward, but she adjusted quickly enough to not make a fool of herself.

The large man blinked at her in confusion, then looked down and smiled when he saw what she’d done. “Ahh, clever.”

It didn’t really seem like many other people noticed her act.

Those that did seemed to pass it off as a Mage being a Mage.

“Thank you.” She then looked around and almost stopped in her tracks, only Rane’s light pressure on her arm keeping her following Lyn and Kannis closely enough to not get separated.

There were close to two hundred people at the various tables that she could see with her eyes, and her threefold sight showed that there were more that she couldn’t see besides.

On every wall were multiple, massive Archive slates showing various Defender clashes. Some were from this current waning—Tala recognized some of the clashes specifically—but it looked like most were selections from the wanings of the past.

Each giant slate had an identifier stamped into the wall beside it, which Tala assumed would be important later.

The four of them came up to a long counter with quite a few clerks checking people in, and Tala heard Lyn interacting with the young man who was serving them.

“Four of you, then?”

“Yes, just four.”

“Do you have a viewing preference?”

“Not today, thank you.”

“Alright, keep in mind that you can request multi-angle packages for any of the currently playing clashes. Would you like the ‘guess the context’ cards? If you get a perfect score, your meal is twenty-five percent off during your next visit.”

Lyn shrugged. “Sure, that seems like fun.”

Inside wasn’t quite as hectic as the flow of people in and out would seem to have implied, but there were still a lot of people. There was simply that singular entrance and exit, so there was a bit of a slow-down entering and exiting.

They only had to wait a few minutes before being led to a table on the main floor of the space. There, the four sat, Tala eliminating her shoes to do so.

The tables and slates were situated such that it was actually fairly easy to see all of them, even with servers and the occasional patron moving about around them.

They were each given a heavy piece of paper with a list of the indexed slates on them. Then, beside each was a blank line. The overarching title stated that for full marks they’d need to state the city that was waning and the Defender who was fighting.

Tala chuckled as she looked at it. It was effectively an impossible task. No one would know so many details about something so—

A louder man at a nearby table interrupted Tala’s thoughts, “I’m sure that slate A113 is the illusionist Mistress Pixa, but I can’t tell if the city is the most recent Marliweather or Arconaven.”

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Tala cocked an eyebrow, turning to look just as the man’s friend was shaking his head. “Are you crazy? That can’t be Marliweather. Look at the grass! That species doesn’t grow nearly that far north on the plains.”

“So, it’s at Arconaven?”

“Definitely.” The second man nodded. Then, the two furiously wrote down their answer.

Tala was a bit slack jawed. Kannis noticed and patted her shoulder. “People love their hobbies, Mistress. The last time I was in here, I sat next to a table arguing about which city a particular clash was from. They knew the exact region and even the Defender, but there were two city names that it could have been, due to the long career of that Defender. What ended up settling it was the weave of the fabric of the man’s pants. Apparently, the weave was one that had fallen out of style to the point of being utterly unavailable by the time of the more recent potential answer.”

Tala shrugged. “So, they were tailors? Traders?”

“Street cleaners.”

Rane huffed a laugh, shaking his head. “Never underestimate the depths of research a man will do for his hobby.”

Tala regarded him for a long moment before shaking her own head. “So it would seem.”

-Do you want the answers?- Alat seemed quite genuine in the offer, even though she obviously already knew the response.

No, thank you. That wouldn’t be much fun. Even with the difficulty of the task there was a mitigating factor that they simply had to get one of the fights correctly detailed for each slate from the duration of their meal. That gave them a few to choose from in each case. Not that that would actually make Tala able to get that many more correct. Or most likely any…

The surrounding atmosphere was quite jovial, and there were pockets of people cheering or groaning as various fights ebbed and flowed.

A server came around before too long and listed off what was on offer, explaining that the four guests could touch either of the panels in the middle of the table to call for either more food or a refill on whatever drink they chose, respectively.

The four of them ordered a spread of food and a mix of drinks, but before the server departed, Tala flagged her down. “Yes, Mistress?”

“Could you let Brand know that an old friend is here? I’d love to at least say hi if he has the time.”

The young woman gave her a searching look before nodding. “As you say, Mistress. I’ll let him know.”

Their food came surprisingly quickly after that, only shortly after their drinks, and the four of them settled in for a lively discussion of the various fights that they could see.

They didn’t know enough to guess the actual Defenders involved—let alone the specific city where the fights took place—but they enjoyed trying to guess the powers of the Archons before they used them, as well as trying to determine the outcomes of various clashes. Even so, they did recognize Master Clevnis in one fight that was clearly not around Alefast, and Rane spotted some hallmarks of the land near Alefast in a fight with a Defender they didn’t know. So, that was either one of the few they hadn’t met, or in a previous cycle.

Brand seemed to have selected encounters that never ended in Mage deaths, but the Defender or Defenders involved were sometimes driven back to the city they were defending. Additionally, the initial combatants sometimes required others to come to their aid. Thus, the four had a lot of fun trying to guess ‘Win, Assist, Retreat.’

About the time that their plates were clean and their drinks were reaching empty for the third or fourth time, Brand came over to the table. He had a scowl on his face that vanished as soon as he saw them. He threw his hands up and laughed. “Mistress! It’s you.”

He rushed forward and gave Tala a quick side hug.

“I thought someone was trying to get a free meal out of me, but it’s you!” He repeated himself, in his seemingly genuine excitement to see her. “I’m so glad that you dropped through.”

She gave a light squeeze in return. “Good to see you, Brand. This is quite the place you have here. And no, we aren’t looking for a free meal.”

He laughed again. “It’s certainly a handful. A lot busier than the last time you visited, eh?”

Tala nodded at that. The last time she’d visited his restaurant, it had been less than a third the size it currently was, and it had been a modest soup and lunch place. While popular enough, it hadn't been anything too crazy or noteworthy. Brand’s wife—Lissa—had been the only person who helped Brand cook and run the shop.

But since the renovation? After talking with the man for a few minutes, Tala became aware that they had a whole team of cooks in the back and dozens of servers who came in for various shifts. Brand didn’t even do caravan runs anymore, partially because he no longer needed the funds with the increased profits of the altered business, and partially because he simply didn’t have the time with all the new demands on him and his wife.

All told, he only stayed out with them for less than five minutes, but it was still good to see him.

He sent them out a fantastic dessert as a finisher to their meal, and the four of them split the thing with gusto. It was a cookie as large as a pie and still sizzling in its pan, piled with a mound of various ice creams in the center.

It was ludicrously over the top, but also so delicious that it was fully consumed in short order.

“Oh, that was fantastic.” Rane patted his stomach happily. “I definitely couldn’t eat that way more than… once a month?” He chuckled.

Kannis huffed a laugh in turn. “That often? Only one of us has Mistress Tala’s metabolism. I doubt that I should eat like this more than once a year.”

Lyn smiled mischievously at her mageling. “Yet you come… weekly?”

“I order salads most of the time,” Kannis responded quickly.

Tala shrugged. “To be fair, even I don’t have my metabolism. My magic takes care of that for me.”

There were some chuckles in response, but clearly the joke didn’t quite land as Tala had intended. Well, fine then.

The four settled up the bill and then slowly walked their way out, almost feeling like they should be waddling, given how full they were.

Tala didn’t comment on how she still had some room, but Mistress Petra had some snacks laid out for her that she would munch on later.

-Yeah… better to not mention that.-

Exactly.

They were nearly to the door when Tala heard someone gasp. “Wait! Isn’t that—?”

“Yeah! That’s Mistress Tala.”

Someone else gasped. “And Master Rane!”

Tala saw with her threefold sight as one of the tables filled with people oriented on them. A realization that she really should have had earlier sinking in. If some of these people made studying Defenders—past and present—a hobby, then she and Rane would be… of interest to them.

The table that had noticed them seemed to explode with fervor, talking to those around them and pointing, even as Tala, Rane, Lyn, and Kannis headed toward the door. More and more eyes turned their way from around the room like ripples across a previously still pond.

Finally, someone with a bit more courage than sense elbowed their way through the others to get in front of the four, bowing deeply. “Excuse me, but are you two Mistress Tala and Master Rane?”

Tala was frozen by the question. Should she lie? If she did, wouldn’t that be denying who she was? Did she really want to respond that way to such a ridiculously simple inquiry?

It would also be a silly thing to do. It wasn’t like there was anything even this whole crowd of people could do to her. Even so, she didn’t want to say yes and deal with whatever the response would be to that tidbit.

At the same time, she didn’t want to lie to this random person, nor fight her way free of the people around her—not that they were actually trying to keep her in place.

Thankfully, Rane took the decision from her hands. He gave a miniscule nod of his head. “We are, and we’re just on our way out.”

“Oh! Oh, of course. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to delay you.” The man bowed lower, and many of the people around them who seemed to have been listening turned and bowed toward the four of them as well.

That, obviously, got the attention of other people—those who weren’t already aware of the developing situation—and the bowing spread in a wave, barely preceded by whispers about who they were.

Now that Tala thought about it, what mundanes would understand what they—as Defenders—did more fully than those who frequented establishments like this? They made it a habit to watch Defenders fight for the sake of humanity, and that had to build at least a modicum of respect for the job into the watchers.

Tala smiled and gave a small nod in return. She felt… something pulling at her, something that reminded her of how she felt within Kit, if much much weaker and not quite the same flavor.

Is it authority? They are acknowledging our authority in some way?

-That could be, but… it’s not quite right. I would doubt that any of them would listen to any crazy command from you. It’s more like… respect? Acknowledgement of who and what you are and all that you do?-

What do you bet that Defenders are handled the way we are to create just this result? That it has something to do with advancing toward Paragon for many people.

-I do not take that bet. You’ve moved a percent of a percent toward Paragon in the last minute.-

One woman called out from the crowd. “Honor to the Defenders of humanity!”

The crowd echoed her back in a near reverent tone. “Honor and strength.”

With uncanny silence, the crowd parted before them even as the people straightened, allowing for Tala, Rane, Lyn, and Kannis to leave much more easily than they would otherwise have been able to.

-Another hundredth of a percent toward Paragon.-

So, we just need to get people to bow to us? To get out of our way when we want them to?

-No… But I don’t actually think you’re serious. I think it’s a clue not a path, a step not the destination.-

Right… That would be too easy. It would also far too closely mirror the arcane way of doing things for her comfort.

When they made it out to the street, Tala was able to perceive the restaurant return to relatively normal, with people grouping up and talking fervently.

She also saw a server quickly clear their table, barely anticipating a small swarm of people seemingly going to claim a souvenir.

Thank you for that… She inwardly blessed that server.

-I’ve given Brand access to a memory of the woman’s face and a note stating what she did to go above and beyond.-

Thank you, Alat.