51 – The mansion

“What is your name?” The scaled lizard-slash-man was at the lead, only treating Ishrin as an equal and leaving Melina and Lisette to struggle against the force of the crowd.

Whether they kept up or not did not seem to matter to him, and observing his behavior had Melina wonder if perhaps Ishrin felt the same, or if his act was simply that good.

One thing was certain: gone was the old Ishrin she thought she knew from his time in Noctis. Whether that man had ever been real was up for debate, but she could not deny, not even with her delusions of being wrong about many things, that something had begun to shift inside him after his brush with death. An undoing, although she could not really know of what, of some thin layer of veneer that had been pasted upon his person, rusting away like old paint peeling off the planks of a barn under the incessant assault of the summer sun.

What was left was some raw, ragged edge she could detect to his voice, portions of a deeper layer he had kept hidden surfacing and bubbling from the depths. She wanted to recoil away from this strange person that he seemed to be, but she reminded herself that it was all just an act, to get into the good graces of the man who had them—even now—surrounded and watched from all angles.

She couldn’t suppress a hint of fear, however, that perhaps this was more than just an act, and roiling depths below the surface calm of the water in ishrin’s mind would sweep her away, drown her with their… not evilness, but lack of care about mundane matters.

Ishrin was feeling none of this. In his mind, he was playing a character and that was that. The fact that the character was eerily similar to who he had been in the before, when the god had not yet tampered with his mind, and new experiences had not cemented the changes, was irrelevant. He had a goal, and a persona who could help him reach his goal readily available.

“I am called Ishrin. With me are Melina, and Lisette.”

The crocodile nodded. “My name is Lucius.” He said. “A pleasure to meet you. I was expecting adventurers of a different… kind, to be honest. Certainly not someone just pretending to be a weak Tier 3. You had me bring out the big guns, you know?”

Ishrin’s smile was predatory. Latching onto his previous train of thought, he idly wondered—even as his conscious mind kept track of the conversation—if perhaps he had been too hasty to deem the current self he was wearing as a simple persona. A mask. Perhaps it was more. It had deep roots, latching onto a vast sea of past experiences that dwarfed his meager time spent on this planet. Whatever the god had done to him was coming undone, slowly unraveling under the pressure of his new power. But that was not all. There was a hint of otherness inside of him, a taste in his own magic that felt alien and out of place, yet very familiar.

“I saw your big guns,” he said, “interesting, those crystals. Would have been interesting to see them in action.”

Lucius smirked. “There always time for that,” he said.

Behind them, barely a few paces away but feeling as if a chasm had opened between them, Melina gulped at the not-so veiled threat.

“But you seem reasonable enough.” The demihuman continued.

Ishrin nodded. “Places like this are necessary. Where the scum of the earth gathers instead of festering and polluting the world.”

“Ahhhh,” Lucius growled again. “You do understand, then. I have misjudged you, Ishrin. You are not a fool, you only act like one.”

The party followed Lucius through the streets of Obscuria, venturing ever deeper through the narrow gaps between the buildings, passing by stores and bazaars that sold ever stranger items. Some of them Melina recognized, and they were dangerous and illegal, contraband goods that alone would be enough to have the city razed to the ground. Powerful curses, talismans capable of turning the tides of power for an entire kingdom, gems of incalculable worth were sold on wooden crates like they were apples. Hallucinogenic spices, forbidden foods, and drugs alongside weapons and strange armor sets she had never seen before were on display behind thin glass walls.

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She used Appraisal to learn more about them, trying to be as covert as possible with the use of Dispel Eavesdropping, the spell Ishrin taught her to be used against simple methods of surveillance. She hoped it would be enough, but even if it wasn’t, Lucius did not seem to react to her prying. She observed the items and curses, memorized them and filed them away in her mind for later recollection, never knowing if they might come in handy in their upcoming fight against the forces of the guild.

Ishrin was doing the same, eyes darting on and about, and he did not need a spell to identify the effect most items had. His ability to see the currents of magic better than anyone present, alongside his vast experience and theoretical knowledge, was enough to deal with a place like this.

Then Melina caught a flash of something. She squinted, trying to see better. Suddenly, she was very aware of the fact that she could not divine Lucius’ cultivation Tier, nor guess at his power. She had not seen him fight, so she did not have any data to base her assumption off of. Not that she would trust them. Not after the incident. But the glint in his eyes was something she recognized. She gently tapped on Ishrin’s shoulder, and whispered to him about what she saw.

Whoever Ishrin had been the last few minutes vanished. In his place, back was the party leader who also claimed to be her friend once again. Melina hid her surprise, and her relief at the sudden change, swallowing the dark thoughts she felt guilty for thinking earlier. Instead, she focused on what she wanted to warn him about.

“I think those are the Eyes of the Taker.” Melina said.

“Interesting.” Ishrin replied. “Could be.” He stopped, and began to do something with his hand, but caught himself before completing the motion. “Man, I do miss Liù.”

Once again, here was the Ishrin she had come to know and love.

But… love? She skipped a step. Friendly love, sure. Anything else? She recalled their conversation in the mountain, and that was before she failed them all. Was it guilt that made her emotions all jumbled, like a thick curtain of writhing vines she had no machete to cut?

She could drown in her own unchecked emotions if she let them, so she clamped her conscious mind around them like a constricting vice and put a lid on them. Now was not the time.

A red building appeared at the end of the road, beyond a great plaza that had no right to exist in the cramped space of a town built on ruins. Melina noticed that Ishrin didn’t look at it, instead he looked up at the sky and he slowed his pace, his pupils dilated, and his breathing grew labored before he quickly turned to look forward instead of up. She tried to spot what he had seen, but saw only smoke and darkness.

A shimmer in the air, and the faint smell of spent mana told her that he had cast some sort of spell, but she had no way to divine what it was. She noticed that Lisette had also seen him cast, while Lucious, who was closest to him, had not.

“Please,” Lucious said. “Allow me to offer you a place to rest for the night. As my… esteemed guests.”

The red palace was a veritable sight. The regent–Lucius, that is, for he had boasted to them about being the self-appointed regent of this town–said that the palace had been the only still standing building of Obscuria back when he came here first, and that he claimed it for his own. It was imposing, intricate in its architecture, with the red sometimes fading to a deep crimson and to black in places where the shadows of the evening were darkest. Its entrance, surrounded by gothic pillars of black marble, was lit by the green fire of several lines of torches that burned bright above the heads of guards clad in gold, wearing the masks of animals of slaughter.

The double doors swung open as the regent approached with heavy steps, and the guards parted with a clang of metal that rang in unison, revealing a dark hallway inside that snaked around the complex before leading to a central, brightly lit, herb garden. The air smelled of mold and staleness, with hints of incense and dust lingering, and the pungent smell of something else. Only the garden had lighter air, fresh in the bright light that didn’t come from the sun but from somewhere else, while the pleasant sound of a waterfall and a small creek soothed the ears.

But back they were before long in the dark corridors, lit only by scant torches and lanterns, and here the paint on the walls was a deep red that swallowed all the light. Doors were closed shut left and right, but sometimes Melina and the party managed to sneak a peek inside when someone entered those rooms, or emerged from them, briefly exposing their hidden contents to the feeble orange light of the torches and to the eyes of the visitors.

There were crates of spices and fruit, dried meats and heads of pigs and livestock, chicken milled on the ground, their feet digging little grooves on the thick layer of grime that had built up over the smooth surface of the bricks.

At other times they saw instruments—of torture they seemed—and other rooms lit by candles and filled with books. One caught her attention more than the others, filled with hexagonal containers that were thin and long, housed in hexagonal holes in a wall made of treated wood, surrounded by decorated fabrics. There were windows there, but they were sealed shut, and through the gaps in the fabric all they could see was darkness.

“Melina,” Ishrin whispered, after having looked at the room long and hard. “You go to the back, put Lisette in the middle, and be nonchalant about it.”

Melina nodded and switched places with the other adventurer.