The magistrate’s pronouncement hung heavy in the air between them. Her words weren’t exactly an accusation, but they did feel like a challenge. If the Nephilim as a race were known to have died out some two thousand years ago, how could Jadis claim to be one?
How the fuck was she supposed to know? D had plopped Jadis down on Oros without a clue about where she was much less any info on her species. She had no idea before Vraekae’s assertion that the Nephilim were an extinct race that they were even a real race on Oros and not something D had just plucked out of thin air to insert into the world, custom made just for her.
Jadis did not know this elf, nor did she have any idea what she was liable to do with any information she gave her. It didn’t seem smart to lie to the magistrate, nor did it seem a good idea to just announce she was reincarnated from another world on the whim of a god. Sticking as close to the truth as possible without spilling the beans on her true origins had been her plan so far when speaking with authority figures. Jadis saw no reason to change that strategy now. However, she was going to choose her words carefully moving forward with this tense interaction.
“We don’t know much of anything about other Nephilim,” Dys spoke first, mouth pulled down in a frown. “Our people’s history isn’t something our parents talked about. You probably have more info on what happened to our people outside of our village than we do.”
“Perhaps,” Magistrate Vraekae mused. “But that still does not explain how it is you and your supposed village came to be in the mountains of Weigrun, thousands of leagues away from the Nephilim’s Final Bastion where the last of their kind fell to the demon lord of the time. The fate of Lyssandria’s Children is one recorded in history as having ended that day. None survived.”
“Okay,” Jay nodded, struggling to keep up with all the new terms the elf was throwing around. “But we are Nephilim. So, maybe not every Nephilim died out?”
“And for two-thousand years your people simply avoided all contact and communication, hiding in Kalters Wall?”
“Suppose so,” Syd shrugged. “We weren’t there for most of those thousands of years. We’re only twenty-two.”
“And the rest of your kind? Where are they?” the magistrate pressed, her tone still as sharp as a knife.
“The village we came from was destroyed by demons,” Dys answered.
“So far as we know, all the rest of our race is dead,” Jay finished, her brow creased with genuine unhappiness.
Nothing Jadis had said was a lie, technically. The village she came from was destroyed by demons; it just wasn’t a Nephilim village. That her whole race was extinct was also true, so far as she was aware. Only, she just learned that information seconds before confirming it back to the powerful elf.
She was also truly sad to hear she was the only one of her kind. Jadis liked her new body, or bodies as was the case, and was earnestly hopeful that she might some day find more people on Oros like her, if for no other reason than she wanted to meet more people that were physically like her. That short-lived dream seemed to be dead on arrival according to Vraekae.
“And you are quite certain no others remain from your village? All that is left are you three?” She repeated, blood-red eyes staring unblinking at Jay.
Jay shook her head and simply replied, “It’s just us.”
The magistrate gazed at Jay for a moment longer before turning on her heels and swiftly walking back behind her desk. She opened a drawer and pulled out a large, round, flat piece of metal covered in arcane runes that glowed slightly even in the morning sunlight. Putting the plate-sized metal disk on the desk, she stared at Jadis, one hand still behind her back while the other rested fingers on the metal surface.
“I do not know what you are hiding, but I can tell there is a lie somewhere in your story. Frankly, so long as it does not jeopardize the safety of my city or the interests of the Empire, I do not care about what secrets you are keeping. However,” the elf tapped the metal disk with one sharp nail, “In my time as magistrate and even before, I have seen more than a few charlatans claim to be something they are not all for their own personal gain to the detriment of my fellow citizens. I am not one to let potentially harmful lies fester and grow when I can cut them out at the root.”
Vraekae took her hand off the disk and motioned palm up at it. “This is a Full Identification Plate. It will allow me to see your status sheets as linked to your badges. I have no idea what would motivate someone to claim to be part of a long dead race, but if that is your lie, I will know it now. Place your badges on the plate and I will confirm with my own eyes.”
“Hold on,” Dys raised her voice as all of Jadis drew back in alarm. “We were told when we got these badges that no one could see our status sheets without our permission!”
The magistrate inclined her head slightly. “Correct. You are free to refuse and leave my office. You are not under arrest. However, know that if you do refuse, all three of you will be banished from my city and all territories held under my power. You can return to Kalters Wall, your ‘home’, if that is what you prefer.”
Well fuck. The bitch was blatantly coercing her. It took a monumental amount of self-control for Jadis to not lose her cool and shout some choice expletives in the face of the pushy prick and storm out of the office. A glance at the ominously glowing dark red ball floating at Vraekae’s shoulder certainly helped cool Jadis’ temper, though not completely. Anger still simmered in her chest at the arm-twisting the elf was submitting her to.
If the plate did what Vraekae claimed it would, her nature as a Nephilim would be confirmed, however, the fact that she was actually just one person instead of three would also be revealed. That was a secret Jadis had no wish to share with the blue bitch.
But if she didn’t show the magistrate her stat menu, then she’d be effectively exiled from all civilized lands in Weigrun. That meant no more nice inn room to sleep in at night. No more hot food. No new weapons and armor, either.
…No more Aila, in all likelihood.
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Fuck.
“We do have a secret,” Jay announced, face turned stony with masked anger. “It’s no threat to you or anyone else for that matter, at least so far as we are aware. However, we don’t want it shared with anyone without our explicit consent.”
“If we allow you to see our status sheets,” Dys continued, “then we demand your word that you won’t tell anyone else what you see. You have to vow it on whatever you hold most sacred and if you break your promise then know that you’ll have made us your enemy.”
“And to be clear, if you don’t want to give us your word, then we are leaving right now. We’ve lived in the wild on our own just fine before now and can continue to do so,” Syd finished.
Her terms set down, Jadis waited to see how the magistrate reacted, nervous bubbles of apprehension making her stomachs feel a bit sick. Playing hardball with a city official was somehow much more stressful than when she was fighting demons.
The elf woman regarded the three giants with one raised eyebrow. It was the least aggressive emotion Jadis had seen on her face the whole meeting, something akin to amusement.
“None of you are in any position to make demands of me. Further, announcing that you would consider me your enemy is the equivalent of stating you would consider Alfhilderunn to be your enemy. I do not think you would want the entire Empire as a foe.”
Vraekae’s rebuke caused the sick feeling inside Jadis to intensify. The fact that she was messing around with matters she didn’t have the first clue about was truly biting her in the butt. She did not have any idea what the political ramifications were of what she’d just demanded of the magistrate.
However, she wasn’t going to just roll over and let the sharp-tongued elf push her around.
“Well, if that’s the way it’ll be, so be it,” Jay said with more conviction than she felt.
Vraekae watched the three for a long time, letting the tension draw out in what Jadis was beginning to realize was probably some kind of psychological tactic. The elf was trying to make her uncomfortable, to see how she’d react. Well, Jadis could handle fighting demons the size of buses. She could handle a little awkward silence from a haughty asshole.
Channeling Aila, Jadis kept her three faces neutral and her posture straight and unmoving. She wouldn’t be the one to flinch in this game of chicken.
The corner of the magistrate’s lip quirked upward. “At least I can see the claim of your age is accurate. Very well. By my honor, I will keep your secret so long as it does not endanger my city or the Empire, may Valtar hold me true.”
That seemed to be the best Jadis was going to get. Taking a step forward, Jay withdrew the badge she carried from the small pouch at her side and placed her badge on the softly glowing disk.
“Here. Our secret isn’t that we aren’t Nephilim.” As she spoke, the enchanted metal thrummed to life and a magically crafted image identical to the one Jadis saw in her mind’s eye when she willed it appeared in the air above the badge. “And it isn’t that we’re hiding any other Nephilim somewhere. The secret is, there aren’t three of us left. There’s just one.”
Magistrate Vraekae read across Jay’s status menu, unmoving except for one finger that tapped her desk lightly.
“Yours now, please,” she motioned to Dys.
“It’ll be the same,” all three of Jadis spoke at the same time, causing the elf to flinch slightly, though she recovered quickly.
Indeed, when Dys put her badge down on the metal plate, the same status sheet appeared. After a few seconds, Syd put hers down on the disk too, showing a duplicate result.
“Fascinating,” Vraekae finally pronounced, her posture relaxing slightly.
Jadis noticed the hovering red ball of doom floated a little further back, its glow diminishing slightly.
“Your claim to be member of a long dead race is accurate. I must say, I am pleased to see that is the case. An extremely unusual circumstance, for sure, but not one that I foresee bringing harm to Far Felsen or the empire.”
Before Jadis could really process how quickly the magistrate shifted from guarded hostility to open acceptance, she continued with her inquisitive analysis of Jadis’ menu.
“I am not familiar with the class Mirror Knight. However, based on the absurdly high nature of your attributes for your level, I assume it is a rare grant of the gods. Perhaps exceptionally so. Further, considering your secondary class, I can presume which god in particular favors you. No wonder you are prone to keeping secrets, if you have gained enough of his interest to warrant a class that features one of his names. Is it Mirror Knight that is duplicating your physical form?”
Jadis was honestly taken aback by how easily the elf seemed to accept her odd situation. So you’re a single surviving member of an extinct species, ‘unusual’ but that’s it? No outrage at pretending to be three people? She didn’t even comment about the ‘perverted’ part of her secondary class. Instead, the woman was just casually mentioning she wasn’t surprised she kept secrets because of D? What was that supposed to mean? What was any of this encounter supposed to mean?
“Yeah,” Jay answered, her tension not yet relaxing, mostly due to not knowing what to do with all the built-up anxiety. “It lets us, or well, me, have three bodies at the same time.”
“Again, fascinating. I will not ask for further details as I have already invaded your privacy further than is warranted, it seems. However, if you find yourself in the imperial capital, I recommend you visit the Class Archives. The archivists there would pay handsomely for information on a unique class and any details on how it was acquired. Considering it is your primary class, the story of how you managed to get it must be… special.”
A bark of surprised laughter escaped Jadis’ lips, unbidden. “Yeah, I guess you could say that.”
“Just to make sure,” Syd asked, picking up the badges from the desk, “but you don’t have a problem with our, my, class? Either of them? You’re not going to tell us we can’t pretend to be three anymore, are you?”
The magistrate’s face relaxed into a surprisingly soft smile as she took her seat behind her desk. “No, you are breaking no law by presenting your three duplicate selves as separate individuals rather than the single being that you are. I will caution you that any attempt to use your unique status to commit acts of fraud will be punished as appropriate by the law, but as is, you are doing nothing legally wrong.”
As she put away the identification plate, she continued. “And as to your secondary class. As long as your rituals bring no harm to others, then I have no reason to object.” A playful smirk actually danced briefly across the blue elf’s lips as that one expressive eyebrow quirked upward. “I have heard of Destarious granting some truly bizarre classes in the past. It seems the one you were given is at least harmless in terms of how the rituals are performed.” Her face turned back to its normal, stern expression. “Just be sure not to involve anyone without their consent.”
“Right,” Jay nodded, a little nonplused.
“Then, that’s all? You just wanted to verify my race?” Syd asked.
“More accurately, I wished to verify that three strange giants wearing nothing but rags that came from nowhere and claimed to be of a dead race and had verifiably killed demons far beyond their apparent means were not a threat to my people or city. From what I can see of your menu, and by how you have comported yourself in this interview, I have my answer.”
“Ah, right,” Jay said again, still taken aback by the situation.
“So, does that mean we’re good to go?” Dys asked, uncertain of what the etiquette was for asking the de facto leader of a city if she could get the hell out of her office.
“Yes, you may go.”
Turning to leave, relieved and still slightly confused about the whole encounter, Jadis froze with one of her hands reaching for the door when Vraekae spoke again.
“One more thing. May I have your permission to inform the prince of your race? He may wish to authorize a search of Kalters Wall to see if any more pockets of your people still exist in secret. To save one of the races thought to be eradicated by the demons from extinction is something he may wish to invest time into.”
“Uh, sure,” Syd shrugged. “I don’t know of any other Nephilim villages in the mountains, but if he can find more, that’d be amazing.”
“Indeed,” the magistrate said, giving Jadis another one of her piercing stares. “Take care, Jadis.”
“You too,” Jadis said in chorus, then quickly exited the room before anything else potentially life altering could come up.