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Sel
Sel was doing more paperwork in her office when a new document from the merchant's guild caught her attention.
[ To whom it may concern.
We at the merchant's guild have recently sold the property to the northwest of Telnar. The negotiation and closure of the deal took place at the Telnar merchant's guild branch, and was received by the newly lorded, Leo.
General details regarding the acquisition can be found below, but due to the nature of the trade, much of the information has been redacted.
… ]
“What crazy bastard thinks it's a good idea to start building near the elven border with the looming threat of war?” She muttered in confusion, her face warping into disbelief as she continued to read.
[ … For any further questions regarding the deal please contact our Telnar branch representative, or with lord Leo, who is staying at the Telnar inn until his home construction order has completed.]
‘The guild doesn't usually skimp on details like this... I should pay our new neighbor a visit. Hopefully he's not too much of an arrogant-’ Her thoughts were cut short by a knock on her door.
One of her guards entered and informed her that almost everyone had formed up outside the base, and Sel looked at the woman in utter confusion.
The captain blinked, searching her own memories as to why before coming up blank. “The hell do you mean most of the guards are outside?” She snapped incredulously.
The fidgety guard stumbled with her words. “Um, er, well, it was under your orders ma'am…”
She scowled and left her office to find out what was going on, the guard following close behind.
‘My orders?’
When she walked out of the base she was greeted with the sight of nearly two hundred of her guards waiting in formation, but none seemed to be wearing their proper equipment.
She rubbed her temple and wore an irritated expression. “Can someone explain to me, what the hell is going on? Because I didn't order an-” Her words caught in her throat as a familiar chill ran up her spine, and soon hundreds of armed selarins poured out of nearby alleyways and buildings, as well as a few dozen armed with crossbows appearing on a few rooftops.
Her leadership instincts took over, and she ordered all to retreat and take up a defensive position back inside the base. But she was stopped by the blade end of a sword as she turned around to re-enter the building, the weapon being held by the guard that followed her out. Moments later the rest of the remaining guard exited the base, fully armed and preventing anyone from entering.
As she realized what was happening, Sel stared the traitor right in the eyes with a mournful and disappointed look. “You know what's going to happen to you all, right?” She asked, and the former guard nodded with a hard expression.
“As long as you're aware… Everyone that is still with the guard, stand down. We surrender.”
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Fel
Fel was overlooking the ambush from one of the nearby rooftops, a smile crossing her face at the rest of the guard's peaceful surrender.
She breathed out a sigh of relief from the plan working out so well, mostly because it was one of the few parts that she did have total say in how it was carried out. “I'm glad this went so smoothly, especially since It took most of yesterday to set up…” She grumbled before she started to dart from rooftop to rooftop toward her next destination.
‘Ok, the soldiers should be clearing out the area around the inn. Hopefully he chooses to join us, if not then I should at least try and convince him to help us. I have some hope given his dislike for the nobility, but I know nothing more since he started using that sound spell. So at the very least I should be able to convince him to help. The worst thing that could happen is that a fight breaks out, but I'd like to avoid killing him, especially after all the effort I put into summoning him.’
She leapt to the ground from a roof near the inn and casually walked over to the entrance. There was a soldier there to give the signal to be ready to fight if the worst case scenario happened. Even though a dragon could easily kill an arch mage, they could wreak all kinds of havoc before that could happen.
Fel hoped he was reasonable.
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Leo
Leo, Allis, and Elaria were spending this relaxing morning in the inn's dine-in area. The two selarin were having a relatively normal discussion about their plans for the day, while in contrast, Leo was casually sketching out potential designs for world changing enchantments. A properly prototyped magic rifle was a smidge harder than he thought, but he managed to iron out most of the rune interactions by testing them on a small scale with his wooden tiles.
His first rifle design was pretty much a sketched out version of the American M1, but only visually, since magic made up for all the internals. He also thought that other designs would be way too excessive for multiple reasons, because with magic he didn't have to worry about recoil or jamming, and if he wanted he could bump up the power to have it act like a fifty cal.
Some other ideas he noted down were more for things he wanted to make for the hell of it. Like creating a laser rifle, freeze rays, repulsor gauntlets, shrink rays, Mjolnir, and more.
His pencil slipped out of his hand and fell to the floor, so he casually pulled it back up with his magic. He paused for a moment to stare at it, and realized something that brought a wide childlike smile to his face.
‘Wait a minute, this is basically the force… I can wield the mother fucking force! Oh, okay, a lightsaber is definitely going to be one of the first things that I'll mess around with trying to make. Now the only question is, what color should it be…?’ He thought gleefully, and a few minutes later he could hear a bunch of commotion coming from outside, then after a moment there was complete silence.
He turned to look at Allis and Elaria and saw that they both were wearing an expression of equal concern. ‘I don't like where this is going… More so if a sketchy cloaked figure walks in.’
Then it happened.
Frowning deeply, he put away his sketchbook with no small amount of annoyance. ‘Really? Maybe they're here for a reason totally unrelated to me?’
The figure snapped their head to him.
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His eyes widened a bit while he reached for his staff. ‘Ohhhhh fuck.’ He thought as the figure walked over to him, seemingly undeterred by his potential mage status.
There was a tension in the air over the uneasy silence when the figure reached their table, and the concerned summon eyed the newcomer cautiously. “Uh, hello...friend? Is there something that we can do for you?”
The mystery woman, now close enough for him to tell, cocked her head with a barely visible smile peeking out from the hood. “Well that depends, Leo. How do you feel about how this kingdom is run?”
That caused him to relax a little, because the worst case scenario was taken firmly off the table. ‘Rebels? I like rebels. I can fucks with some rebels… But it's still very unsettling to name drop me like that. Still, best to be blunt.’ He cast a sound barrier around the four of them and noticed the figure tense as the cast went through, which revealed that she could sense mana.
He answered before she could comment on the spell. “I fucking hate it. I hate the abuse. I hate the treatment of its people. I hate the slavery. I hate the guild. I hate the army. I hate the nobility. And I fucking hate the academy.”
The woman stared motionlessly at him, before trying to suppress her laughter. “I assume we're inside your sound spell then.”
His brow arched in mild surprise, because she not only knew of the spell, but the lady didn't react to him casting without words as well. “Okay, my turn to ask a question. Who are you and how the fuck did you know that?”
The figure let out an amused snort. “I spied on you of course. I don't want to lose track of my summon now, do I?” She answered casually, causing his jaw to hang open, unable to retort to the blatant admission, while Allis and Elaria were equally stunned.
The figure chuckled. “If that's a revelation, then I have something even better to show you. But could we go to your room to discuss further? I'd like to take off this stuffy thing, and I do value my privacy.”
Leo nodded while his mind was still trying to organize the multitude of questions that he wanted to ask her. “Uhh, sure. Allis, Elaria, mind joining me and the walking plot development?” He asked the two slightly dazed selarins who both nodded in response.
A nagging thought crept into his mind as they made their way down. ‘If she's revealing herself now, then her plans are moving forward, or whatever she was planning got screwed…Oh, I did just become a lord… Wait, has she been spying on me since I was summoned? … No, then that would mean she left me stranded in the forest for nearly three days… No… Wait...’
Leo made sure to cast another sound barrier on the door when they got to the room, and entered to find Allis and Elaria blocking his path. The two of them were frozen in place, so he stepped around them to see the now de-cloaked mystery woman.
She was five and half feet tall and looked like a relatively slim human, beside some very obvious differences. She had thick white horns on the sides of her head that looped around to point forward. Her skin was a fair white with hard looking scales that trailed along her body in clustered patterns.
‘If it wasn't for the length of her rough tail being nearly five feet, she would have a close resemblance to the ‘Au ra’ from final fant-’
His mind started to mentally make the connections as all the information suddenly fell into place.
“Oh, she's a dragon…”
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Fel
Fel was elated at the fact that Leo had a dislike for the established systems, but that probably meant that the whole ‘getting him to hold a grudge’ plan was completely unneeded. And the stories her grandfather told her about the last summon seemed completely useless, since Leo either did the exact opposite or progressed way too fast for how he described them.
Summoning magic was like randomly pulling something out of an ocean of infinite worlds, so it being dangerous was putting it lightly. If the caster didn't have a solid, clear, and specific intent for what they wanted to summon then it could be deadly, even for a dragon. In fact, it is a well known secret among dragons that over half of the eras were caused either by a summon, or a botched attempt. The sixth, and tenth eras being the worst cases of fuck ups for the dragons.
Luckily the drawbacks for summoning deters almost every dragon from doing it, since doing it permanently lessens the ability for a dragon to shift between forms. It only takes more than two summons to be stuck in whatever form they're left in.
Fel wondered if Leo's fast progress and aligned feelings had to do with her using raw desire to summon him, and that maybe he was in fact her perfect ideal. There are stories of dragons who used their desire to summon people or items that reflected their true wants, but it was even more dangerous since not many know what they truly want. So a few of those stories usually ended with the dragon dead, because a dragon could summon a horrifying monster that represented their deepest selves.
A half hearted smile crossed her face. ‘It might be fanciful thinking, but hopefully it's not too far off. It would mean that he'd just join us if I explained ourselves to him.’ She thought while she removed her cloak, and showed an amused expression at her visibly shocked audience.
“The name is Fel'aristriza Quitial'tis, but you can call me Fel. And by your expressions I seemed to have topped my previous surprise by a sizable margin.” She remarked pridefully.
Leo seemed to drop from surprised to completely unimpressed. “Eh, maybe, but I couldn't honestly give any less of a fuck.”
Fel blinked in confusion. “Uh, excuse me?” She asked while a little taken aback.
The man rolled his eyes, irritating the dragoness. “Look, I can guess that you're here because I've somehow fucked your plans, probably due to me becoming a lord, though if you were spying on me then I'm more surprised you didn't reveal yourself when I leveled up into an arch mage.” He explained bluntly.
Fel gawked at him for a moment, then decided that she had enough of dealing with his shit. “Alright, if we're being blunt then I should admit that you single handedly took a planned schedule that was supposed to stretch out over a year, and squashed it into just a little over a week. Which caused me to experience mana depletion for the first time, so fuck you for that.”
The human smiled mirthlessly. “Well consider it pay back for leaving me stranded and alone in a forest. Oh and if you didn't, then fuck you for just watching.”
She was going to retort, but sheepishly broke eye contact instead.
“You were watching me! Do you have any idea how much dehydration fucking hurts?!” He yelled irritably.
‘Probably not as bad as mana depletion…’ She mentally rolled her eyes.
Fel sighed and knew that she would have to take the blame for that, knowing that it wasn't even her idea. “I'm sorry for that. I should have talked to you as soon as I summoned you, but I didn't for two reasons and one of which was for my safety.”
Her summon narrowed his eyes for a moment before dropping the front. “Fine, apology accepted. Can't quite stay mad at the person that brought me here, since this world would be considered a literal fantasy where I'm from. I've even experienced every child's, and most adults, dream to fly freely through the sky. So holding a grudge would be petty... But still, fuck you for that.” He ended jokingly.
She couldn't help but bark a small laugh. “Fair. So back to the reason that I'm here. I want you to join our takeover of selaria, and I won't share anything more with you unless you agree to join.” Again, not her decision to withhold information like that, but Yez was fairly specific regarding their first interactions.
‘It's going well so far, and we're pretty much in agreement…’ She saw no reason for him not to join them, even if she didn't agree with how she was asking.
Leo furrowed his brow and his lips curled into a slight frown. “Hm, I'd like the answer to a question first. How did the dragons rip out the last summoned soul, and was the process quick?”
She was confused by the seemingly random question, though she knew the general idea behind it. “Um, well it's not really a soul. It's actually their consciousness that was bonded with entrapped mana, and it takes quite a bit of effort and time to accomplish, especially ripping out someone's consciousness. It's more like a ritual than a spell.”
A wide smile stretched across his face. “Alright then, I would like you to kindly fuck off.”
“Excuse me?”
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