After the eventful trip they just had Azura was relieved to see the walls of Fire Ward. He heard the sighs of relief from his traveling companions made him feel a little better. He wasn’t the only one glad their trek was over.
“So I know we are going to need to start hunting soon, but please tell me we can at least buy lunch first? No offense to Lily and Siara, but I’m ready for some processed food.” He chuckled at Kat’s eagerness. He didn’t personally mind much either way, he was just glad that he wasn’t going to have his wards wake him up every time a creature had decided an invisible wall was a great place to test how durable their heads were.
“None taken, even I’m getting sick of it, and I’m the one who cooked it.” Lily laughed off Katy’s comment, even Siara chuckled good naturedly.
“Wow I didn’t know Lily could take a negative comment with grace… or a compliment… or any comment really.” Lily glared at him. He just smiled cheekily at her.
“Let’s see how much grace you take comments with after I burn your hair off.” She grouched grumpily. Honestly he wasn’t confident that she was joking, he might have to keep one eye open for the conceivable future.
“Now now children, we’re almost there. We should at least pretend to be respectable mages when we talk to the guards about the request.” Katy stole one of his favorite lines, but she got a pass because she was right, and he was a little proud of her for thinking about the boring stuff he knew she hated.
“Yeah yeah, fair enough… So who wants to talk to the guards?” He sighed as his friends all took a big step back. He rolled his eyes. “And back to everyone walking behind me.” he said sardonically. Katy winced, but didn’t walk up next to him. He sighed again before grabbing the request out of his pack.
They had finally gotten close enough to see the gate ahead of them. The walls of this town were roughly the same size as the wall around the small town back in Delford. They were however of a much higher quality, made of thick and durable stone. He supposed the walls would have to be tougher when you didn’t have much larger city walls and several other towns between you and anything actually threatening.
“Halt!” They stopped facing the city guard, who actually seemed to take his job seriously despite how mind numbingly boring it must be. “State your business!” It would be more trouble, but it was still kind of refreshing to see a guard taking their job seriously for once, although to be fair he was a pretty recognizable person every other place he had been.
“My name is Azura Silver, my party and I have come to complete the request from Haden of the town guard.” He showed the guard the request. The guard read it over carefully, before glancing back at them and frowning.
“This is a rank 3 quest, aren’t you a little young to be taking on a quest like this?” Rank three was considered the tipping point for most normal people. If a group of regular soldiers had solid equipment and decent skills they could deal with monsters ranked 0 through 2 well enough, but rank 3 was where monsters started having magical abilities or other exceptional qualities that made them too difficult for normal people to deal with.
“We are hopefuls for the Grand Forge academy, taking on this request is to be our sixth trial.” The guard looked surprised, before composing himself. Azura had to give him props, just knowing they were capable of even accepting this quest meant he wouldn’t be able to do a single thing if they chose to just walk past him, but he stood his ground resolutely anyway.
“Why choose this quest? The pay is way less than it really should be for a quest of this difficulty even factoring in the extra rewards.” Of course he knew that, but it was also the quest that gave him the best chance to collect rare materials, which was far more valuable to him.
He was mildly surprised that all of his friends had managed to remain quiet so far, but he guessed they really didn’t want to have to deal with this kind of thing. “Well I could spout some bs about wanting to help a town in need, but to be honest the biggest factor for me is useful shadow panther pelts are. This was one of the few requests that didn’t require us to give up the materials we acquire.”
The guard laughed. “That’s good! Good intentions are great and all, but idealists tend to find themselves very dead very quickly. I find with these things it’s the pragmatists that get things done.” He didn’t outwardly react, but his mind unfortunately flashed to his mother. He didn’t quite like it, but the guard was right nonetheless.
“Of course, it doesn’t matter why the job gets done, as long as it’s completed.” He chanced a glance at his friends, they were fidgeting and fighting very clear impatience. He chuckled at their restlessness. “I don’t suppose you could point us in the right direction to find Haden?”
The guard spaced out for a second, eyes furrowing as he retreated into his thoughts. After an uncomfortable few seconds of silence the guard finally spoke. “Haden can be a tricky one to find most of the time, but if you’re willing to wait a few hours he almost alway climbs up the bell tower about 2 hours before the evening bell.
Azura raised an eyebrow, they had planned to take a break, but that was more than 4 hours from now. “Is there anywhere we might find him before that?” He would rather get started before the evening, and not even meeting him until just before wasn’t ideal.
The guard laughed. “Good luck with finding him anywhere else, unless you want to ask every guard, even the ones you don’t know are guards because they are in their civilian clothes. Haden values his privacy, and he gets it by being so chaotic you genuinely have no idea what he’s thinking.
He grumbled, he was about to let it go when he remembered he happened to have a super skilled tracker in his party, but then he also realized there would be thousands of people in there and a basic description was not going to make her job much easier. Well it would be worth a shot either way. “What does he look like?”
The guard raised an eyebrow. “Well I can’t exactly draw you a picture, so the best I can say is that he has a small scar on his right eyebrow, that’s his most distinguishing feature.” Lovely, if that was the best they had to go he didn’t like their chances of finding him outside of the bell tower.
He sighed and nodded at the guard who proceeded to let them through without further comment. They walked through the gates to find the town full of people hustling back and forth. The buildings were all fairly simple, but they looked durable. Each one was made from thick stone. It was even more obvious from the inside that this was an outpost town.
“So I can try looking, but a scar really isn’t much to go on, and using that extensive of a spell is typically frowned upon in public.” Luna was right, there probably weren’t many mages here skilled enough to detect her spell, but with how little info they had on the man there wasn’t much point anyway.
“Not really worth the risk, if we get caught we’d be risking more than a slap on the wrist, and it’s not like we have enough info to have good odds anyway. Unfortunately it seems we have..” He used his clock spell. “....4 hours and 24 minutes to kill. Any ideas?” Frankly he was hoping one of them suggested splitting up. He enjoyed their company, but they had spent almost every moment together while they were traveling, he could use a break.
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“I heard they make really good grilled lizard here!” Yeah no surprise there, Roran was definitely a people person.
“Maybe we should split up. It’s unlikely we will all agree on something and I’d rather explore than bicker for 4 hours.” Lily to the rescue. She even made it sound like it wasn’t purely to get away from everyone for a bit.
Roran pouted when everyone quickly agreed to Lily’s proposition.
“Oh and Roran I assume you’re ok with being Cynthia’s buddy.” Cynthia shot him an indignant look as everyone else laughed.
“What?! We are in the middle of a city, why do I still need a buddy!” He chuckled, it was extra funny too, because she probably didn’t even want to be alone, she was just indignant he hadn’t let go of her little mistake of separating from the pack.
“What part of punishment didn’t make sense?” He raised an eyebrow at her. “You did something reckless and stupid, so I wrapped up a safety measure and a punishment into one thing, hopefully this will teach you to be more careful.”
She pouted, but Roran was laughing uproariously. “Of course! Being a bodyguard is so much more fun when you call it the buddy system. Now I can tease her and do my job at the same time!” Cynthia glared at him, and Azura guessed from his grimace that she was talking in his head now.
It was Azura;s turn to laugh. “Alright so splitting up it is, I’ll be in the library if anyone needs me.”
The others rolled their eyes. “What you in the library? We never would have thought to look there.” Katy gave him a deadpan stare.
He smiled. “Obviously, that’s why I told you.” He laughed at her disgruntled stare. “Anyway, assuming we don’t meet up earlier, 2 hours after the noon bell we’ll meet at the bell tower.” Everyone nodded and went their separate ways, Roran and Cynthia the only ones sticking together.
He couldn’t say he was surprised, he was the only one that stated his intentions and most people wouldn’t be thrilled at the idea of a library. He however was not most people and hoped it would have something interesting.
***
Azura was rather disappointed in the library. It wasn’t really all that surprising, but he had hoped there might at least be a few books of value. And maybe there was in a sense, but none that were valuable to him. He sighed for the umpteenth time since he entered the library 2 hours ago. After 2 hours of wasting his time he was about ready to cut his losses and leave.
“Aren’t you a little young to be wasting your day away in a library?” He turned to find a gentle looking elderly man. His hair was pure white, but didn’t seem to be falling out. However Azura got an odd feeling when meeting the man’s gaze. He couldn’t place it, but oddly couldn’t seem to register the man’s eye color either. It was like a dream he knew the man was there, but even as he saw him he couldn’t really register most of his features.
“It’s pretty rude to use magic like that in a space like this.” He had no idea what kind of spell the man was using, but this wasn’t the kind of thing that could happen normally.
The old(?) man chuckled, suddenly seeming a bit different, his hair was darker and his frame wider, yet still his features were just as hard to place. “Perhaps, but I assure you it’s for a good cause. You don’t yet know what you are, or your true worth, but you will.”
Why was his head spinning so suddenly, he flooded magic through his system trying to offset this strange sensation as much as possible. It didn’t work, his head still throbbed violently and he barely remained standing. “What… are you do- doing?” Even getting his words out was a struggle, his mouth suddenly dry and his tongue numb.
The man(?) chuckled again. The world spinning and his form constantly shifting not seeming to bother him at all. “Me, nothing, but you. You have grand things ahead of you, heir of Silver. The time of the origins rebirth draws near, and you most of all must play your part. I am not making myself seem this way, it’s just the only way you are currently capable of perceiving me lest time fold in on itself.”
What was this person talking about? He didn’t understand any of it, and his throbbing head certainly wasn’t helping. The outskirts of his vision started to fade, but he desperately hung on to consciousness. “Wh…. Origins.. Re-rebirth? I.. don- don’t un..derstand.”
The man looked sad, or did he? Azura had a hard time remembering. “I know you don’t, but you will, and it won’t be a pleasant realization.” He reached his hand towards the mysterious being in front of him, but the world went black before he could touch it. Its last words echoing in his head. “The end times draw near, it will be up to you to decide if they are the end of the beginning or if this is the beginning of the end.”
***
Azura jolted awake. A quick scan of his surroundings left him very confused. Falling asleep in a library chair was very unlike him, especially not this early in the day. He didn’t recall anything about the book in front of him, but it was opened up to a page closer to the end than the beginning. Even weirder, all the pages were blank. His brow furrowed, how had he known that the only pages he remembered seeing were the ones that were open now.
He sighed. It was a little disturbing how used he was becoming to his mind being tampered with. He got the feeling this book was important, but as he flipped through the pages his odd insight had proven to be true. Blank every last one of them. Not a single word or even a splash of ink. The pages were a brilliant white as if they had just been made, despite the odd feeling he had that this book was ancient.
The covers were a simple black leather, the only decoration being a silver dragon chasing its tail in a sideways figure eight. He had seen the symbol before of course it was a symbol the dragons used to say for eternity. This book wasn’t something you would simply find in a library that much he knew for certain.
He debated what to do with it for a long time, but he just couldn’t release the feeling that it was important and that he couldn’t afford to simply leave it here. He sighed and hoped his mysterious feelings were right, because he really didn’t want to get arrested for stealing a blank book of all things.
He put the book in his bag, thankful that he had a blanket to wrap it in so it wouldn’t be damaged by the rougher things in his bag, like pieces of tough spider armor. He checked the time, and very nearly panicked, he had less than 2 minutes to get to the bell tower at the agreed upon time. So he rushed out of the library hoping that didn’t make him even more suspicious.
Luckily no one stopped him and while he got a lot of frowns and grumbles no one got too upset by him moving at inhuman speeds and jumping across rooftops and bouncing off walls. Yeah, today was not his day. Of course inhuman speed or not 2 minutes was not enough time to make it to his destination, at least not while having to navigate a busy city and avoid hurting anyone or breaking anything.
He made decent time though and was only 3 minutes late in the end. Which still made him the last one there as his friends raised eyebrows at him both for his tardiness, and the fact he had just fallen out of the sky to land in front of them.
“They must have a pretty good library if you got that caught up in there.” Katy gave him a raised eyebrow. Among noble punctuality was very important, even being late was a layed out decision to show off their influence and power. A duke would never be late to a king's ball, but the king would almost always be late to the duke's ball. He didn’t love the being late on purpose bit, but he had at least taken polite punctuality fairly seriously.
He shrugged noncommittally, he didn’t want to lie to them, but he wasn’t entirely sure what the truth was either. “Not really, I just got some weird vibes there, so I ended up being there longer than I thought.” That much was true if not the full truth. It would have to suffice for now.
Katy narrowed her eyes. She knew him well after all their years together, but even she couldn’t see through his poker face when he truly wanted it held. He just rarely held because the hurt in her eyes when he hid something from her always filled him with guilt. “Yeah sure, so what now? We just wait an hour for this Hayden guy to show up.”
Her mood had so obviously soured that their new friends were all giving her concerned looks as she grumpily crossed her arms. She would get over it eventually. She was no stranger to him keeping secrets from her by now. “Pretty much. I mean we could climb to the top now in case he’s early, but there really isn’t much else we can do.”
Luna’s eyes glowed briefly. “Nope, no one up there at the moment, but still I wouldn’t mind the change in scenery.” She spoke hesitantly, obviously worried about Katy’s sudden foul mood.
Katy shrugged. “Up there down here doesn’t really matter much.” He sighed, why was she always so dramatic about this. Everyone had things they didn’t want to talk about, he didn’t know why it was such a big deal to her.