CHAPTER 99 DISCUSSIONS
When Fiona had said she’d let the people in charge know I was up for talking I hadn’t been expecting to be meeting them today.
But here I was, standing in something similar to a courtroom. Fiona leading me here had given me more of an idea of where I was as well. I was in Elendar again, in one of the royal barracks inside the noble district.
I had thought it was odd that they would keep me there considering I was essentially a nobody, and I had voiced as much to Fiona.
She, in turn, gave me an odd look before explaining that I was the only one who had any true insight into what was going on. That information had filled in a couple of blanks and I didn’t like all the implications in regards to it either.
I was being held in a spot where they could keep an eye on me in case I tried to make a break for it.
I didn’t like the thought of that. Especially not after having spent nearly a year as a slave. Having my freedom impugned again was tugging the rope attached to the bell labeled ‘PTSD’.
I tried to swallow down my anxiety on the subject and focus on the task at hand, namely getting over the fear of public speaking.
When Fiona had mentioned talking to the people in charge I hadn’t expected so many actually important people. I’d expected someone important, maybe. But I hadn’t felt like I warranted the attention.
Instead, I got the head of the adventurers' guild in Elendar, a man named Braksilis. One of the higher ranking officials for the investigators stationed in the capitals, Orwen. Lillian was also here which gave me a double take. If she recognized me she didn’t express it in any way I could tell. Mortimer, one of the three guard commanders in Elendar. And last and perhaps least, compared to the rest of the group, a strategic officer of the military. He wasn’t as big of a name as the rest, so Fiona, who had been pointing everyone out to me, wasn’t able to give me a name. She had been able to recognize his position as a strategy adviser due to some markings on his uniform.
Most of the occupants in this room wore armor of various makes, none adhering to a specific design philosophy which indicated that none of the groups here were necessarily connected with each other aside from their underlying loyalty to the queen and country. This was further exacerbated by the fact that the investigator and the officer both wore uniforms and no armor.
Most were discussing amongst themselves when I entered the room. They had stopped for a brief moment to observe me while I walked in before continuing their hushed talking. Lillian didn’t seem to be engaging them but she appeared to be at least paying attention. The Strate- I’m not calling them that every single time… SO works better, yeah we’ll go with that - The SO was furiously scribbling on a piece of paper while everyone talked around them.
I came to stand in the center of the room while Fiona pointed everyone out explaining who they were. It was nice to be able to attach names and organizations to people even if I didn’t necessarily know who they were, or what they did.
After a few more minutes of me standing there unsure of what to do, Lillian cleared her throat.
Most of the talking subsided almost immediately.
“I think we’ve delayed long enough, let's get this underway. The sooner we can get what we need the sooner we can make more appropriate plans and courses of action,” Lillian spoke calmly, confidently projecting her voice through the room so she was easily heard, despite the relatively small gathering of people.
“I think, before we start getting into any questions, we should start first with getting a history of your time here. A lot of information is hinted at in the few testimonies we’ve received from eyewitnesses who were there along with you. One of them said that you said you’d been ‘pulled through dimensions.’ I think that would be a good place to start.”
My eyes narrowed slightly as she finished speaking, opening up the floor for me to divulge my secrets. None of which I was particularly interested in giving to this group.
I glanced at each of the five people sitting in front of me. They were arranged sort of like a committee hearing except that they weren’t on raised platforms requiring me to crane my neck to see them. Mortimer sat furthest to the left, arms crossed with a critical look, he was also the stereotypical-looking military man. Old, short white hair, and a fashionable scar that looked almost intentionally planted on his cheek.
[Level 3545]
He was also quite powerful but that was naturally expected for someone in their older age in this world I’d assume.
Braksilis sat next to him. By comparison, he looked about 40 years younger. Mortimer looked like he was pushing 70, while Braksilis barely looked 30. Long dirty blonde hair that looked well-kept flowed down behind him to just below his shoulders. He didn’t wear armor and instead wore some luxurious clothes that showed off his stature, both as someone rich and as someone with great physical strength.
[Level 3235]
Of which he had a claim too.
He had tanned skin that looked more like he had done it for the look rather than the fact that he intentionally enjoyed being out in the sun. He didn’t give off the air of being shallow or vain though. More that his image was carefully cultivated.
Moving on to the next person, if looks could kill I would be dead twelve times over with the glare Orwen was giving me.
[Level 2775]
Mmm, somewhat low level compared to the other two.
Orwen had close-cropped brown hair and a relatively ugly face to look at. It wasn’t any one thing to say in particular, it was just that he was unattractive. Maybe he realized that and so he took it out on everyone else? From everything people around me had told me, my features were a marked improvement over how I’d looked as a human.
I wouldn’t say I was ugly as a human, just that I wasn’t the cream of the crop in appearance. Just rather average. I’d probably even go so far as to say forgettable.
Lillian was obviously Lillian, absurdly powerful tier six yada yada.
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The last man sitting to her right hadn’t even looked up yet and was still scribbling furiously on a piece of paper. He had a mop of brown hair on his head and glasses that completed the whole ‘scribe’ vibe he had going for him.
I stared at each of them individually trying to determine what I actually wanted to do. My gaze lingered on Lillian’s for a moment before turning back to Orwen, ignoring the last man altogether.
After a few passes between each of them, I still remained undecided. No great ideas were coming to mind. Eventually, Orwen grew tired of my delay and spoke out.
“Well? Are you going to speak or need we force it from you instead? We have more important things to be doing rather than you wasting our time.”
I turned to him frowning, “If you have something more important than your country potentially getting crushed by a fallen goddess I’d love to hear about that. On the other hand, I highly doubt you could force anything from me. Definitely not easily anymore.”
Which was partially true. Using both [Storm Call] and [Ride the Lightning] I could cover huge swathes of distance without being impeded and was more than confident to run away from any mind controllers that weren’t on the level of Lillian. And I highly doubted they had any that powerful.
Seemed like it would be a great security hazard, no self-respecting conniving politician would want anyone that could read their minds or control them anywhere near strong enough to be able to pull it off.
Orwen’s eyes bulged at my words but before he spoke I continued on, bulldozing over whatever inane thing he wanted to say.
“I’m deciding how much I even want to tell you, because, quite frankly, I trust you about as far as I can throw you. And strength is my lowest stat. In fact, now that I’m thinking back on it, I’m lucky so far that I haven’t been locked up by the elves in the first place. But that’s beside the point, the point is: I don’t trust you. And in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not from your country, I have exactly zero loyalties to you, or your country and zero incentive to try to work together. Even less so after the bullshit one of your royal guard captains tried to pull on me roughly a year ago.
“So I’m deciding how much I want to tell you,” I finished with a shrug.
Orwen’s face was completely red at this point and looked like he was about to blow a gasket. He opened his mouth to speak and was interrupted by Mortimer, the guard commander, laughing.
“Hah! I haven’t seen anyone give it to you that good in a while, Orwen! He’s got balls, I’ll admit that. Listen, elf. You’ve got a couple of options here, you can either work with us and get a leg up on what’s going on or you can leave us all in the dark. We’re not stupid, we can put two and two together. You’re not from this world, we get that. What that means for this situation is that you have the knowledge we need to account for a threat and we have the knowledge you need in order to communicate the scope of the threat properly. Are you really going to throw everyone under a carriage over one ordeal?”
I moved my gaze from Orwen to Mortimer. The man had a slight glint in his eye, amusement? Regardless he made a good point, if I worked with them I could potentially get access to a lot more information than I had previously. A lot of my problems stemmed from just not knowing enough about the world around me and not having the proper resources to find out.
But…
I was also a spiteful little bastard, I would throw people under the bus, or the carriage as they put it if I was going to have to end up dealing with someone like Raylith. Mainly because I would have better options in the long run. I could always go to a different country and just not deal with him in the first place.
Definitely not Alixia, but somewhere else for sure.
“I would,” I said, with a little more confidence than I probably felt at the moment. I wasn’t a great public speaker all things considered. “Once again, I still just don’t have a reason to work with you on this. About 50% of the people in this country that I personally cared for are now dead. I also have no desire to continue working with a government entity that allows their royal guard captains to throw their weight around and bully people weaker than themselves. All of this to say nothing of the fact that nothing is keeping you from discarding me once you have all the information you want from me either.”
Orwen finally blew over and couldn’t keep quiet a second longer, “Is that all this is about then?” He yelled indignantly, “You want concessions? People are dead because of you! And you’re looking to get paid for it!”
My head instantly snapped to him my tone going completely cold, “My friends are dead, insult me with their deaths again and you will quite literally cost this country its only source of knowledge on this.”
He tried to say something, but Lillian placed a hand on his shoulder.
I grit my teeth tightly as I tried to control myself in turn.
“This is, in part, what I’m referring to. Some moron is given a modicum of authority and thinks he knows everything. He has no idea what’s going on and speaks rashly, this doesn’t necessarily inspire confidence in me about the rest of your capabilities.”
I didn’t fully include Lillian in that statement, she hadn’t treated me poorly the one time I had worked for her way back then. Mortimer also didn’t seem like a bad person either. But as the saying goes, ‘one bad apple can spoil the bunch.’
Maybe I was reading the situation wrong and Orwen was just passionate about his job. But that wouldn’t explain him thinking I was trying to get paid for what happened to my friends, the fact that he couldn’t even make that connection spoke highly of either his incompetence or his inability to listen. Which, in truth, went hand in hand with each other.
“I’m looking for concessions, yes. Not money. My goal is to kill that bitch. But I don’t want to have to actively work against people who are supposed to be my allies to do so. I can’t trust you to work together for the good of your own country let alone for the good of my goals. I got a healthy example of that with corrupt people serving in your government once already, I’m seeing the makings of a second.”
Mortimer spoke up again, “Old Orwen isn’t that bad really, he’s just had a particularly rough time because the Queen has been on him about this given it's his job to know about and prevent stuff like this from happening in the first place.”
I scoffed, “And insulting me by saying I’m looking to get a payout for the death of my friends is therefore supposed to be excusable?”
For a moment everyone was silent except for the scribbling of a pencil on paper. Or quill I guess. I wasn’t actually sure what he was writing with actually.
“So what exactly are you looking for then?” Lillian asked.
“I think a great start to this conversation would be an apology,” I said, giving a pointed look to Orwen.
“Where I come from, when we do something wrong we then apologize for it.”
“Orwen,” Lillian said with a slightly commanding air.
Orwen spluttered for a moment, but a single look from her quelled any excuses he might’ve had.
He turned to me with a hateful glare, which I held calmly.
“I apologize for the words that I spoke.” He said keeping his tone monotonous.
It was painfully obvious that he didn’t truly mean it, but I never expected him to. But that wasn’t entirely the point, the point was to get him and the rest of the group to realize that I wasn’t a pushover.
I nodded my head slightly to him.
“I’ll be honest, I’m not entirely sure what I’d want. I really just want her dead, I’d prefer to do it myself but I doubt there’s any living mortal capable of actually hurting her. I don’t necessarily want money, although having extensive wealth would be nice, I’m not sure what I’d spend it on. Personal strength is something I have to acquire myself.”
I let out a slight sigh as I ran through things in my head, I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted in the end.
“Actually, we might be able to help you with the last one,” Mortimer said from his seat.
I turned to him with a raised eyebrow.
“How opposed would you be to joining our military?”