Shade awoke with tension in his muscles like he had never experienced. Frigid air filled his small home and he cursed from beneath his bed covers. After a few minutes of lazy arguing with himself, Shade convinced his feet to find the cold stone floor. He grimaced, and started to prepare for his day.

He expected it to be a frustrating one.

His bare skin flinched away from the nearly freezing tiles of his home. Despite his insistence on avoiding the advantages that come with being the son of the queen, Shade had usually found comfort in the stylings of his birthplace. Today, however, the heat resistant properties of the small house worked too well and made Shade’s safe place feel unwelcoming. Although he would rather find excuses to delay, Shade instead found himself pushed from his home by the architectural betrayal of having no insulation.

Before he left, he donned the uniform of his station. Without fail, Shade had his uniform pressed and presentable so as to lead by prime example. It was something he took immense pride in. On his officer’s jacket were buttons of gleaming, polished silver. They relaxed him as he pushed them through and sealed himself into his working attire. His pressed trousers were comfortable, his normal boots sliding on easily. With each step of the process, Shade felt a little more settled.

A cold snap had occurred overnight, something the weather keepers were supposed to be aware of, and now snowdrifts were forming even as hurried vendors and homeowners shored up their property and valuables. Allusia was susceptible to weather in unfortunately dramatic ways, the vast chasm in which it is situated is horribly protected from the elements. A small price to pay for the geographical boon of access to the “wonders” of the labyrinth.

Wonders which, Shade was sure, had claimed the lives of more guards over the evening. Death or dismemberment, each night more grievous injuries were gifted to his guardsmen by the “wonders”. It was a necessary cost of survival almost anywhere in the world but these were Shade’s people. Each lost limb, each home with an empty bed, each time he had to give news and a small tithe to a widow, he hated the labyrinth all the more.

Boons, however, it certainly did provide.

Everywhere he looked, Shade could see the fingerprints of the labyrinth all over the city that stood within. A shop sits damp but unfrozen like the others around it, a collection of brimstoke wisps floating around their store. To the untrained eye, they looked like fireflies but if you could see past their glare, a tiny humanoid shape could be seen hurriedly trying to evaporate the water from its bound home. The small, sentient flames are just one of the myriad of the strange and unique things from the labyrinth that were common in Allusia and not seen anywhere else.

He nodded to the owner, a majaal of the Hiyec tribe. Shade expected the woman to bow, as she always did despite his protests, but today her vibrant green eyes squinted at him instead. There was a twitch in her upper lip before she spun on her heel and returned to her home cum storefront. Shade blinked and found himself feeling uneasy. In truth he was happy he hadn’t needed to do his customary song and dance about them being equals. At the same time, it felt very well timed in Shade’s estimation.

This feeling was only intensified as Shade made his way to the Barracks. Where he saw majaal, and it seemed rarer today than usual, they avoided his eyes or outwardly seemed hostile. Was it the weather? Had someone been arrested in the night who shouldn’t have been? Shade wondered at the reason, pointedly ignoring one potentially obvious answer. Rounding the final corner to the large thoroughfare containing the Barracks, Shade got his answer.

“There he is!”

Without more warning than a quick shout, Shade found himself quickly being surrounded. Each and every member of the mob was a majaal and none of them seemed to mind any more than Shade was royalty.

“Stay back.” He didn’t even raise his voice. Shade simply held out his hand and his sword formed within. A thick pommel materialised comfortably in his large palm, the familiar roughness of red twine which covered the handle felt like holding hands with a lover. From the hilt that he now held, a foregrip appeared before the blade itself shot forth. The process took less than a second but it was arresting, to say the least. The swell of incoming bodies stopped in an instant.

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“Oh he’ll fight us, but not the empire!” A different voice from the first riled up the crowd again, counteracting the effect of drawing his longsword, Raze. The crowd encroached again and this time Shade did raise his voice.

“I said back. Did you forget why you fear me?” He hated that this was the solution, but there was a surefire way for Shade to deal with the ire of his kind. A wave of malaise jumped from person to person as Shade made eye contact, flaring the power around himself and causing the entire mood to fall under his command.

Controlling emotion is a powerful ability. Each and every member of his mother’s brood was a potent warrior and spellcaster, the abilities which she held passed on to them. Shade had received her allure, for what it was worth. He tensed that imaginary muscle in his back that he normally ignored with all his might. The essence of submission flowed from Shade and the effect was instant and palpable. None of the crowd would shout again, so Shade continued.

“I see my mother was not just harassing me last night. You seem to have the wrong idea.” He scanned the now cowering crowd with a mixture of pleasure and guilt. He felt guilty that he was enjoying flexing his control. He continued speaking, but began walking without slowing. The crowd parted before him, now unsure of themselves. “I am in a position of power, against my will. I am not your prince. I am not her prince. Unless you have a problem for me to solve like everyone else does, stay away from me.”

He would happily sever his connection to the majaal right now. Luckily, he did not have to create any more of a performance. The watching eyes of the curious, the fearful and the expectant were common fare for Shade, so he ignored them easily as he stomped the cobblestones towards the Barracks. Each planted boot felt like it landed not on stone but a skull, and Shade was revulsed and yet at the same time enjoyed the imagery.

Enough of these childish runnings arounds. No more manoeuvring to the whims of children, manipulators and fools. Shade would take the command that he was constantly being thrust towards, wrangle the opposition into something he could manage and move from there.

“Sir, there’s a mob of majaal outside, are yo-”

“It is dealt with.” Shade cut the guard at the door off. His name was Remy and if anything, Remy should have been a secretary. Or a spy. He was almost too perceptive for his own good, Shade mused. “Any news while I was gone?” Shade’s time away from the Barracks was, recently, miniscule. That didn’t mean, however, that there was any shortage of occurrences which could pop up in the downtime.

“Oh! Uhhh… nothing to report, sir. We had a dwarf woman who wanted us to clap her husband in irons and that new girl with the face had an awful time convincing her that not cleaning their kitchen wasn’t really our jurisdiction.”

“Wonderful. When I asked for news, I meant things of importance.” Shade’s voice was colder than he liked it, but he could not warm himself either. “Also,” Shade could not let that strange remark pass him by, “the girl with the face?”

“The one with the scars.” Remy suddenly looked uncomfortable, as though discussing something taboo. He shuffled his feet and was clearly finding them very interesting, he looked up through curly locks of brown hair and shrugged. Instead of directing his ire towards the talkative man, Shade let him go with a roll of his eyes and a jerked motion of his head.

Shade looked around at the Barracks. The building was ancient, as old as the labyrinth apparently. The walls were made of the same dull grey rock, impenetrable and mana conductive. Sconces lighted the darkest corners, but for the most part the ambient light was enough.

With a little more time on his hands, Shade would have liked to go to the canteen, pick up a warm beverage and shake off the cold which the morning’s frosty welcome had brought with it. Unfortunately, that idea was only another tantalising wish that he could not fulfil, like getting a moment’s peace or being someone else. The annoyance that he couldn’t do the small niceties for himself was just another straw on the back but one more and he was sure he would break.

The final straw, it would seem, came in the form of the young woman sitting in his office when he arrived to it. The privacy of the room was sacred to Shade in a way he didn’t articulate to himself and having that sanctity stolen was almost a step too far.

So, this is the delegate from Guan? The woman was young, though Shade could never really tell if a human was old until they started to grey and wrinkle. She seemed pretty for their kind, sharp eyes and a straight nose. If high cheekbones were a positive for humans, she must have been beautiful. Shade saw past those things, past the gaudy hair ties and baubles she wore which were designed to attract the eye and saw the woman for what she was.

Powerful muscles sat relaxed in her neck, impossible to hide from a truly trained eye. Her deep brown eyes moved with precision, precisely not looking at places which may seem suspicious. Crossed hands on her lap but her foot was resting against a tiny, uneven crack in the floor which would give her leverage to move every potent muscle in her body whichever way she needed to. Impressive. It took effort not to draw Raze from its ethereal scabbard as an act of protection, but Shade subdued the impulse.

“So you’re Guan Po Daiyu.” Shade had known of her coming for days at this point and no amount of delaying had kept her at bay. Pretence could go die in the labyrinth for all Shade cared, he had no time and it seemed that no matter how polite you were, people were stubborn and greedy. They would take anything, at any time. “How can I assist you today, lady Guan?”

While Shade was not the ruler of Allusia, the matter of the city’s security fell to him. Avoiding the possibility of war fell to him. Contact with the patriarch of the Guan was impossible for whatever reason and now he was dealing with an unknown.