“Name and reason for visit?”
At the eastern Gate the Guard asked a Woman. Her face has the signs of long sun exposure and some wrinkles. Brown eyes and black hair shows below the cowl she wore for travelling. Brown and slightly dirty clothes are worn and over her shoulder is a small knapsack with maybe all her belongings she might possess at the moment.
“Grey, I am visiting my sister, as she did not visit for a long time and I am worried.”
“So family visit. One Copper and have a nice day.”
Paying with a dirty copper Coin, Grey enters the City of Halk. Her first visit was a bar in the centre of the Town. Sitting down she got comfortable and rests for a while.
“What can I bring you?”
“Tea please. I am a bit thirsty after the travel.”
“Of course! A tea will be three scrap. Do you want to eat something too?”
“No thank you. I only want to drink something before going further.”
“As you wish.”
After a while the Clerk got back with a tea and gave secretly a piece of leather with an engraving on it to Grey.
“Thank you for the tea. Here is a Copper. Keep the rest.”
“Thank you for your patronage!”
With this the conversation was over. While drinking the Tea slowly, the piece of leather got stashed away. Relaxing and waiting for a while, Grey left the cup filled with a small pouch where it is. The Clerk Angie took the cup and vanished with it into the kitchen where she put the now empty cup near the basin to be washed.
Grey’s next target is a small House. This house was dilapidated and known as abandoned but with determination she entered it without being seen. After a while a different Woman exits the place with platinum blonde hair and a fair face. Her clothes are clean and made out of blue coloured silk.
Right afterwards she walks directly to the Branch Office of the Peddler King. Her looks made some people look twice and also inside the building she was noticed right away. A Clerk directly approaches and greets her.
“Welcome to the Peddler King. May I know how I can help you, young lady?”
“Very courteous, I thank you. I am visiting to see someone called Rendlar. He is working in this Branch, is he not?”
“Um… He is working here, but is also the vice President. I can not just tell him to visit someone, I do not even know how to call.”
Slight apprehension is seen, as he has not the authority to just ask the Vice President to come right to an unknown person.
“Ah, I should introduce myself. My Name is Shadi, I came on the Order of my Family. Please give him this, and he might understand.”
With this, she gave him a piece of leather, where a special crest is burned into. The crest itself seems simple, but resembles Rendlars own crest with subtle differences.
“I will bring it to him. Please wait in this meeting room for a while. Do you need something?”
“No, thank you. I do not need anything at the moment. I will just wait there until he got some time for me.”
With this the two separate. Shadi waits for not even five Minutes until Rendlar came right through the door. The assistant got shooed away from him and the two of them are now alone.
“You have it?”
“Yes, it is in my possession. I was informed to heckle you about your poor security. Next time it could become a rather problematic occurrence.”
“I know. I am sorry about that. When I got the letter I was shocked beyond believe, that someone could just steal something right out of our storage. How did he get it back?”
“It was brought by the ones who ordered the theft. They are gone now, so do not worry. Better be wary of your people, there are some spies around.”
“I bet they are from Claire. She would sell her own Sister to a Cannibal if the Money is right…”
Rendlar has never liked Claire’s way of handling things. She is way too shrewd and focuses only on Money and Profit. Honesty is nothing she could sell so it was worthless for her, but Rendlar is the opinion to have lower profit for better relation to the customers. His demeanour might be too honest sometimes, but even he knows when to be honest and when to be silent.
“Here it is, and just keep silent about the whole stolen part.”
“Why? It could be a great way to finally burn her fingers, even if I think she will just throw one of her persons into the maw of the lion to safe herself.”
“It was stolen to invade and conquer the Crater. If this will be found out, then there will be heavy repercussions on both sides. I was told to tell you ‘if the Baron never had invaded, there would be no reason for war.’”
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
While holding the Amulet, Rendlar looks incredulous to Shadi.
“It was a Baron, which did that? This is definitely the doings of the Telk higher ups. If that is true then…”
“Then it would be great to never been mentioned. If Telk wants to retaliate, they need to tell they tried to invade which makes them the aggressor. By keeping quiet they have no choice as to never talk about it. Will they say how they stole an Amulet from you? Attacked unprovoked another piece of Land? Admit how they had enslaved their own Mages?”
“Wait, wait, wait… They enslaved Mages?”
“Elane of the Blue Ice was given as tribute to the Baron by Harvey the leader of Blue Ice. She did not want to help out in showing them around the Castle and was made willing with a enslavement collar.”
“By Aldrin! If that comes to light, Blue Ice would be ostracized and even Arcana would be stained in dirt!”
“That is why they will not tell anything. She would have been eliminated and Blue Ice would be profiting out of it, if it had all gone successful. They underestimated Null’s capabilities and now they are more of a liability.”
“There might be another lockdown… Better to stock up on food and necessities.”
“Yes, but back to the topic. Do not mention it to anyone. With the knowledge alone you have the upper hand.”
“...I know. I just don’t like those underhanded methods. But if Claire really wants to play like that, I will use her own foul play against her. Please leave it to me.”
Shadi nods. With this the talk is over and Shadi bought new clothes for herself and different Gems on Nulls behalf. Afterwards she leaves high handed, the same way she came, now with a new necklace and precious rings on her hand with a small pouch swinging on her side.
Escaping the prying eyes Shadi got back to the hut and after a few minutes an adventurous looking Girl with toned skin and a scar over her face came out of the building having a rucksack on and venturing into the Forest from the west Gate.
…
‘good work. Come back right away. It will be problematic, if they track you down.’
“Do not worry Father, they could not find me even if I paraded right in front of them all. Mother trained me especially thoroughly in transformation.”
‘Yeah, I saw. You are a prodigy in that, Doppel. Otherwise I would have not named you that.”
“What does my Name mean Father?”
‘Oh, it is an old tale about a being which could change into a nearly flawless copy of the one it saw. It was called Doppelganger. I think it was a German Word? Whatever. You can transform into multiple different forms, so it fits.’
“Doppelganger, huh? I will try my best to become that!”
Somehow I think she misunderstood me, but nothing wrong with her keeping training in mind.
With the jewels she brings back I can finally try to use them as amplifiers for the three dimensional Runes. Right now I work on experimenting with different materials, but crystalline objects work best for now. I really do not understand fully, but seems like their repeating structures makes them work way better than those non structured and chaotic mixed materials.
Right now I need some different Jewels to grow crystals for my further experiments. Later I could even use them as amplifiers for different runic circles, hopefully.
…
Three weeks vanished in the blink of time. Elane studies all my documents on my experiments and looks way less apprehensive any more living here. Especially the runic system is for her a treasure trove. Seeing how Mana behaves inside the Runes is nothing normal Mages can do, so my knowledge is for her a completely new approach.
The conversion of her was rushed because of the person I noticed in the vicinity of Mordred’s Amulet. Elane had internal not really stopped resisting and it was hard for me to switch a piece of her out of her body. I even needed to sedate and cut her open to go deep enough next to her heart to finally make her one of my Family.
When she woke up and saw me healing her wound she was at first horrified, but I did not care. She is now tethered to me, and she knows this.
Tomorrow they will be here, so better make sure she is all right and explain to her, what this now means for her, as she is also another experiment, as I finally took over Baron Whatshisname and pulled peculiar and hidden secrets of Magic and… Miasma out of his Mind.
…
“Welcome back. What does the Ivory Tower want this time… um… Edward?”
“...Edgar. And I am here on official terms. Are you alright Sir Null?”
Not really, the first time I had to reassemble a Spirit from its core. Ava has many defects right now and can not fully be used, but he should not know that.
“I am rather fine, thank you. And how are you Edgar?”
“… I am still a Lord, so please call me Lord Edgar. Otherwise I am fine. There were some… strange happenings I have noticed and came to warn you.”
“Warn me? Sound serious. Is there something wrong?”
“A rogue Mage wants this Land for his own, and might happen to attack you. We have no relation with this attack.”
What a blunt lie. The Information came right from the Ivory Tower and even had many Details only your own party had known. You gave him all of the Information and used him as a probe of my ability.
Telk noticed they can not invade by show of power and then used an Archmage with no way to inherit the Barony of his Family to take it by force. If they were sure about all of my Cards, they would have invaded directly, but better to lose a disgruntled third child with a rather short fuse, than someone with any kind of worth.
“That might be problematic! We will heighten our Guards against him. Do you know, when he might be attacking?”
The twitch on Edgar’s Eyes corners are even noticeable by a tone deaf person. Is he that incensed? Well I play further and see how long he will stay put or if he really wants to bury him into obscurity just like that.
“To be honest… We though he might already have travelled here to attack. But you seem fine and I see no damage.”
Obviously. I built that Village in only Weeks. Repairing all those little things are way too easy. I needed only a day.
“Of course there is no damage, he never was here. Do you think, he ventured into the Forest and was swallowed by it? The Forest is rather dangerous, without the Amulet.”
Wow is he angry. His Mana is fluctuating heavily. Not that it looks like a spell, but I already started to create a new Ava with all what I now knew through his death. This body will not hold for much longer anyway. It never had a will to survive any more and the internal organs start to deteriorate.
“Let us stop the charade. We know he must have been here. I do not know, what you are trying to do, but the facts can not be hidden.”
“What facts? Are you insinuating you knew someone would attack me?”
“We just had a hunch, but were too late to inform you.”
“But then there is just a hunch. Why do you say there are facts? Can you put them openly on the table?”
“…”
Nothing? Then he was never here. Sorry, I do not play your silly game. If you want to use the vanishing of a Baron as a reason for an invasion, you will have to say how you knew he would come here and find people who would say so. Right now there are only a few people who can say it, and those are Blue Ice.
Sorry Blue Ice, but you know too much.