“Well,” The Prince began delicately. “That wasn’t quite how I was expecting things to go.”

Once the Prince had ended court for the day, Azarus and I had followed her out of the throne room through a small, recessed doorway off to the side after I had collected my cloak. She had led us through a small corridor in silence before we’d emerged into another hallway. From there, she’d led us through the mostly empty halls to a stately room that must function as an office, based on the décor. Gesturing to a pair of chairs for Azarus and me to sit in, she sat behind a large wooden desk that dominated the back half of the room.

“Yeah,” Azarus said faintly, collapsing into a plush red chair. “Me neither.” He turned his head to the left to watch as I sat down as well and worked his jaw for a moment. “I…I don’t even…”

I held up my hands defensively. “Hey, I saw a chance and I took it. It seemed to work out, right?” I said, looking from Azarus to the Prince.

They exchanged their own look before the Prince delicately cleared her throat. “In the moment, yes. I would say that your…performance did work to put Olgar off balance. In some ways, I would also say that you achieved the exact opposite of Olgar’s intentions. Rumors of today’s court session are no doubt already spreading across the city, and working to bolster Azarus’s reputation.” She paused. “However…” She shook her head, before opening a drawer on her desk. Out of it, she pulled out a crystal bottle of some kind of dark, nearly pitch-black liquid and three glasses. Setting the glasses out, she uncorked the bottle and poured a generous portion of the suspected liquor into them, before sliding two of the glasses across the desk.

Azarus grabbed one of them before immediately shooting the contents of the glass back. I picked up mine as well and tried it. Tasted like rum, to me.

“However, the consequences of such a…grandiose show are difficult to calculate.” She said, drumming her fingers on the desktop. After a moment, she stopped and fixed me with her gaze. “Ah, but my apologies. We haven’t been properly introduced, have we?” She mused, before extending a hand in my direction. “I am Elysael, of House Florens.”

Somewhat hesitant, I reached across the desk to grab her hand in mine. Despite my expectations, it wasn’t quite as soft as I would expect the hand of a royal to be. Rather, it was a strong grip, with prominent calluses on it. “Uh, nice to meet you, your highness. I’m, well, I’m Nathan Hart. You…can call me Nate, if you want.” I said, shaking her hand.

She nodded at me, dropping the handshake. “Then I insist you call me Elysael. In private, you may do away with formalities.” I nodded back at her and sat back in my chair. Elysael took a deep breath before raising a perfectly sculpted scarlet eyebrow at me. “Out of curiosity, how much of your tale was truthful?”

“Um.” I floundered, before looking over at Azarus. Leaning over to him, I got his attention. “So, how much are we telling her?” I said, trying to whisper as quietly as I could in his ear.

Azarus didn’t bother to keep his voice down when he answered me. “Everything.” He said tiredly.

I was taken aback. “What, even the…?” I said, pointing to myself.

“Yeah.”

“And…?” I mimed as if I was stroking a beard on my bare chin.

Azarus rolled his eyes at me. “She already knows about Grey.” He said, emphasizing the name.

“Uh, alright,” I said, turning back to Elysael. She was watching us with a mildly amused expression, as if we were a pair of mischievous children. “I’d say maybe sixty percent was accurate-ish, and forty percent was bullshit I made up on the spot.”

She didn’t look surprised. “And what was false, exactly? I’m assuming you are not actually a wandering Herztalian Knight?”

I choked on a laugh, slightly hysterical. “God, no. I’m really,” I said with emphasis. “Really not from around here. Your Highness, what do you know about Precursors?”

For the next half hour, I explained everything that had happened to me since I had arrived on this planet to Elysael. I spoke about my abrupt appearance outside of the doomed caravan. I spoke of the elven raid that had killed most of the refugees, and our transport to Addersfield. I spoke of my purchase by Magnus, and how I’d narrowly escaped being inflicted with a slave bond thanks to Azarus. I told her about being awakened, and learning what and where I was.

I didn’t, however, tell her about our plans. Little as they may be.

When I finished, my throat actually hurt from talking so much that I couldn’t help but grimace. Seeing my discomfort, Elysael poured me some more of the rum. The burn of the alcohol helped to numb my throat. The Prince had mostly let me speak in silence, only asking a few clarifying questions throughout my tale.

“I see,” Elysael said quietly. “To think, a Precursor would appear during my reign.” She grimaced slightly, furrowing her brow. “And that he would fall victim to the darkest part of dwarven culture when he did.” Standing up from her desk, the Prince shocked me by actually bowing in my direction. “On behalf of the Principality, I apologize for the actions taken against you by Lord Magnus.” Slumping back down into her chair, she sighed. “Unfortunately, there is little I can do to aid you. As Azarus has no doubt explained, while you are indescribably lucky to have dodged a bond, you are still legally a slave in the eyes of the Principality. Not even the highest authority of the land can forcibly dissolve slave contracts. And that maggot Magnus would deny me, or any of my agents, if I expressed interest in purchasing your contract, purely out of spite.” She finished bitterly.

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This time, it was Azarus and I that exchanged looks. Looking back at her, I cleared my throat. “Yeah…” I started. “I know. While it would be great if you could just wave your hand and fix all our problems, I didn’t expect it. I tagged along with Azarus for a different reason, something that you actually can help me with.”

That caused Elysael to sit back up in her chair. “Oh?” She said, surprised. “And what is that?”

I leaned forward, excited despite myself. “So, it turns out that as a Precursor, I get unique racial talents, yeah? One of mine is the ability to learn all seven of the Professions.” At that, Elysael gave me a strange look. “Yeah, seriously! So far, I’ve picked up six of them. The only one that I’m missing at this point is Artistry. We looked around Addersfield, and there was nobody around but Magnus that I could get to teach me, so obviously that was out. Azarus mentioned that you had it though, and could teach me. So, uh, yeah. Here I am.” I finished, somewhat lamely.

Elysael stared at me disbelievingly for a moment without blinking. “Are you telling me…” She started slowly. “That you traveled for nearly a week, braving the monster-infested wilderness, to show up in my city and cause such a scene in my throne room, that my courtiers will be speaking about it for years. All so that you could have the Prince of Rhoscara teach you…Artistry?”

I coughed into my right fist. “Well, I didn’t actually see any monsters on the trip,” I said weakly.

When Elysael transferred her gaze to Azarus, he just shrugged at her. She shook her head at the both of us slowly. “Well.” She said weakly. “I have no objections?”

“Hey, thanks!” I said, smiling at her. “So, do you want to do it now, or later or something?”

Elysael took a deep breath for a moment before nodding. “Now is fine, I suppose.” She said, extending her right hand in my direction. I reached out across the desk and took it in my own right hand. The Prince adopted a somewhat stern look on her face and spoke authoritatively. “Do you wish to learn Artistry?”

I smiled widely at her. Finally, after all this time, I was going to find out what was going on with my Professions! “I do,” I said excitedly.

That familiar little tingle happened again, between our two palms.

But…

That wasn’t all that happened, though.

Pressure.

Enormous pressure suddenly exploded into the room. It was charged, as if energy was suffusing the very air that we were breathing. It bore down on us, driving Azarus, Elysael and I out of our chairs. In fact, the chair that Azarus was sitting on exploded underneath him, sending him flat on his back. Because Elysael and I were leaning over, we merely slipped out of our chairs. I think she might have hit her head on her desk though, on her way down to meet me on the floor. Vaguely, I was aware of glass shattering and the furniture Elysael’s office groaning and splintering.

It was as if a colossal weight was bearing down upon me, pitiless and unrelenting. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t even scream. Even the act of moving my eyes was somehow a gargantuan undertaking. Slowly, terrified out of my mind, I dragged my eyes to meet Elysael’s own terror-stricken gaze through the gap under her desk. I could tell from the wild panic growing her in eyes that she didn’t know what was going on either.

What was worse, however, was that the pressure was growing.

With every passing second, I could feel the pressure increase upon me, as if I was sinking ever further into the abyssal depths of a callous ocean. I could feel my bones begin to creak within my body. I could feel my lungs compress, driving the little air I had in my body out.

I could feel it when my heart began to slow.

As blackness began to creep across my vision, I was certain that I was about to die. Somehow, I’d managed to survive this far upon this damn planet, but something I’d done had ended up killing me nonetheless. If I’d been capable of it, I might have laughed.

Suddenly, the pressure suffusing the room disappeared in an instant.

In that same instant, not only did three simultaneous gasps of air explode from the three people in the room, myself included, but the door exploded as well. I was still too dazed to lift my head to look in that direction, but I heard the clang of multiple pairs of armored feet rushing into the room.

I may not have seen them enter the room, but I sure felt it when a rough, gauntleted fist seized me by my shoulder and flipped me on my back. Above me was one of the avian knights I’d seen so often, staring coldly down at me.

Oh, and pointing his enormous curved great sword down at my throat, close enough I swore I could feel the tip on my Adam's apple.

“Don’t move.” I heard a low, menacing voice echo out of the knight's pointed helm.

I was still too out of it to really pay any attention to him, however. I could still remember the feeling of my heart slowing in my chest. It seemed to be fine now, though. I wanted to bring a hand up to my chest to clench at it fruitlessly, but at the last second, I remembered the orders of the knight.

Above me, I could see the eyes of the dwarven knight narrow slightly down at me through his helmet, as if he could somehow tell.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see another knight, similarly poised with his great sword over Azarus. I guess not even being the Prince’s cousin saved him from suspicion with these guys.

Behind me, I could hear another one of the knights speaking in a low voice to the Prince, as they presumably helped her to her feet. Whatever they were saying was too quiet for me to hear.

“Enough.” I heard the Prince say in a rough voice. “Enough, my Corvid Knights. I do not believe this was an attack.”

I heard the knight above Azarus do as she said and step away, but the knight above me didn’t move for a moment. He just continued to hold my gaze, sword poised above my throat.

“Sir Ofrean…” I heard the Prince say in a warning tone, voice still coarse.

After a moment, the knight above me complied. He took his sword away from my throat, and slung it across his back in the same instant that he stepped away from my prone body. “By your command.” He murmured.

Once he was away from me, Azarus appeared in his place. “Ya all right?” He said in a concerned tone.

I just gazed at him for a moment before blinking. I opened my mouth to try and answer, only to find that I couldn’t. Only a croaking noise emerged from my throat.

Azarus grimaced. “Dumb question.” He said under his voice. Reaching down and grasping my arm, Azarus hauled me to my feet. When I was finally upright, I was able to see the damage done to the office.

It was wrecked.

Where before the office had been stately, with a sense of understated elegance to it, now it looked like someone had rampaged through it with a sledgehammer. Everything glass in the office had shattered, including the windows. The chairs and the bookcases were either shattered or half collapsed, with the books themselves somehow looking as if they’d exploded as well. Scraps of paper lay everywhere, some of it still floating in the air.

I looked around a little, lost.

What the hell had just happened?