Maelstrom [https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/AP1GczPoDLLN9uARzyI0jGMliFX9lxOfH-K7uBlqqRvjYkpxrsjylmQr7bRLQn9cPXfk5zCPgt87vRzT4Q07Ljwlvw1nkZvOg8kkiZECaFB1Dok37WLjiZTMFLcZUx22xBdVi06g81eUoUs6iXj2CyDW8Pi1=w639-h958-s-no-gm?authuser=0]
Jerem was regretting that he hadn’t stopped in San Gra Lan on his way to Tulimeir to stock up on the good liquor. He had been expecting to be able to raid Paul’s cabinet upon his arrival since one of the few things they had always agreed upon was the quality of alcohol. Some of the most fun times he had experienced since joining his liege decades ago had involved an unhealthy amount of booze, and he desperately wanted something to help take his mind off his current predicament.
He had been lucky that he hadn’t been exiled from the Sacred City altogether after his argument with Pati, but he had returned to Tulimeir anyway to try and assist the AOA in the search for the missing party, King’s Dream. Being part of the response team to strike at the Scarlet Banquet after Knight Thevaris had set it aflame reminded him of his time with Paul. They had cleared out many cultist lairs together over the years, and it still made his heart twist in sympathy for the victims that he could easily relate to.
His own abuse at the hands of cultists had been how Paul and he had met in the first place. He had followed the man ever since then until almost seven years ago when everything imploded. It seems that when he thought there would be plenty of time for reconciliation later, he hadn’t considered Paul wouldn’t be available for it.
Jerem had been a fool, and now it felt like he couldn’t even try to make amends.
After securing the lair and helping canvas the intricate network of tunnels below the city, he reported back to the AOA, having caught one of the escaping cannibals to be questioned, and was hoping to find out what happened with King’s Dream, maybe even get Director Trayvious to help set up a meeting for him that wouldn’t involve Patricia. He only needed a few minutes to talk with them in private.
But King’s Dream was no more. Phoenix and Dazien had renounced their membership and would no longer be working with the AOA. He was appalled by the action.
Even if this branch of the AOA was broken in some way, perhaps poor staffing, non-adherence to their regulations, or even some corruption… that was just one branch that could be pruned. The party didn’t need to turn their backs on the entire global organization.
There wasn’t anything he could do to change what had happened, though, so he found himself walking through the Market District of the inner city in search of some Emerald Caste liquor while trying to come up with a new plan.
He paused in front of the shop with the large sign above the wide entrance declaring “Mother’s Cupboard.” He had been there a few times in the past whenever his old party was visiting and highly enjoyed the hidden deals he could find within. It wasn’t really known for having alcohol specifically, but maybe he could find some rare bottle from a faraway nation that had been stashed away at the bottom of some chest of pirate treasure…
Inside, however, it was far more crowded and loud than he had recalled it ever being before. It appeared that some kind of celebration was going on at the moment, and he tried to maneuver his way through the crowd to figure out what the happy occasion was about.
A raspy alto voice rose above the crowd as he got closer to the counter, and he recognized it as belonging to the current proprietor, “If you had asked me a week ago if I believed those insane rumors about Saints bein’ able to revive the dead that Priest Barrett was spoutin’ after embarrassin’ himself, I would have told you to go see a mind mender and pray to the Undertaker for forgiveness for speakin’ such blasphemy,” the large cinderen woman said to the crowd of onlookers before squeezing the young man sitting on a stool beside her in a side hug, “But today she’s done the impossible and brought my Rayk back from the pyre’s flames to be with us once again! Praise be to the Celestial Pantheon!”
“Praise be!” the crowd replied with additional cheers, and Jerem envied quite a few of the bottles he saw getting passed around.
Jerem wandered for a bit, half listening and asking a few inane questions. Madam Malik’s son had been one of the Adventurers rescued, and the celebration was in his apparent resurrection after having been proclaimed dead months ago in a monster attack within the city.
“I’ll be owing Saint Wayland for the rest of my life,” he heard Madam Malik say to someone, “I wish there was a gift I could leave at her home like the others do, but I don’t know if any of the treasures among my trove can equal the gift she has given me.”
Jerem paused at that. Perhaps that would be the window he needed to slip through after Patricia slammed the door in his face. If he could convince this woman that the treasure in his position was a worthy gift, maybe she could arrange the meeting he needed.
He waited a few more hours, trying his best to blend in with the crowd and inconspicuously chat until the celebration began to die down and people began returning home as night fell.
“You need something stranger?” Madam Malik surprised him by asking.
Nothing usually surprised him, but he had found himself halfway buried in a chest, looking for a bottle of something strong enough to affect him. “Just looking for some Emerald Caste liquor,” he replied.
“You’ve been wanderin’ my shop lookin’ and listenin’ for hours now,” she said, narrowing her eyes at him, “I might only be a Seeded Sapphire and you a tough lookin’ Emerald, but I don’t take kindly to thieves nor spies.”
He stood straight before giving a slight bow of deference. Trying to leverage his strength wouldn’t help with his goal at the moment, “Not a spy nor a thief. Just an old adventurer trying to fulfill an old friend’s wish.”
She glanced behind him towards the chest he had been plundering, “For Emerald booze?”
Jerem chuckled, “Actually, that was for me. I’ve unsuccessfully been trying to gain an audience with Saint Wayland and her brother. See, I have a divine relic in my possession that their father asked me to bring, and I thought maybe you could help me make sure they get it.”
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Uriel was slightly relieved when he entered the room that he had been actively avoiding and saw that the runes that had been etched into the floor as a reflection of the ones on his torso were missing. Those had been the most blatant reminders of his torture and the biggest reason he couldn’t stand being in here before.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
The room was still a chaotic mess of elements, however, and he wasn’t sure that he would want to stay and sleep there. It was difficult to just stand there and look at the mess that was reflected within him.
“Whoa,” Phoenix whispered beside him, and he felt her grip on his hand loosen.
She can see what a complete wreck you are, his mind unhelpfully told him.
“This is awesome,” she surprised him by saying as she walked across the obsidian stone floor, giggling as she stepped over one of the veins of lava under glass running through it and saying, “I love that the floor is actually lava. That was just an imaginative game kids played in my old world.”
“It’s… messy,” he replied, uncertain how to explain how it made him hesitant.
“Eh, I’ve seen pictures of worse. There’s not even any clothes on the floor yet.”
“Isn’t it a bit too… chaotic?” he asked as he carefully followed her after shutting the door behind him.
Her brilliant smile practically knocked the wind out of him as she turned and proclaimed, “That’s what makes it so interesting!”
“None of it goes together, though,” he pointed out, “Fire and Ice… a potent storm that causes nothing but discordant destruction.”
“Well, I think storms have their own kind of beauty,” she said while walking towards the desk seemingly carved from ice, “Take it from me when I say a storm outside my window was a welcome change to the monotony that my life used to be before I arrived here. Seeing the rainfall didn’t feel sad; it felt refreshing. The flash of lightning and the deep rumble of thunder wasn’t scary; it was exhilarating.”
Uriel walked up next to her to see what she was looking at on top of the desk and found a small row of runes carved along one edge. She glanced up and smiled at him before saying softly, “I might not like being cold, but one of my favorite things to see out my window was this one.” She pointed at the rune for “Snow” and then pressed her finger to it.
It began to snow in his room.
They both looked up at the ceiling, and Uriel wasn’t sure how he felt about seeing the massive maelstrom symbol of the Destroyer that filled it, matching the Soul Mark on his arm. He didn’t know how he hadn’t noticed it before, but now it was swirling shades of blue as it deposited big fluffy flakes of softly falling snow upon them.
Phoenix’s laughter distracted him from the ceiling to just watch her being so… happy. She looked so free as she twirled around the center of his room as if she would catch every flake with her outstretched arms. As she twirled towards the dark, electrified cloud that served as a sofa, he moved to try to stop her from accidentally spinning into it. Instead, he ended up getting pulled by the stronger Sapphire Caster and tumbled into it with her.
Her laughing increased as the soft marshmallow-like storm cloud caught them, and he was grateful the lightning within didn’t try to shock them.
“This is just like my nebula furniture,” she managed to say as she turned to look at his flustered face. “You know, I think my room might just be as chaotic as yours with the decor.”
“At least yours all match your starlight theme. Snow and storm clouds and lava floors don’t exactly go together,” he muttered.
“Sure they do,” she replied, lifting a hand to the ceiling to catch more snowflakes as he readjusted to look up as well, “Just because you don’t like the theme doesn’t mean it doesn’t go together or that there’s no value in it.”
She lowered her hand to look closer at the magical flakes, “I’ve been thinking about what Destroyer said to us, as well as Trickster… Really, just the gods in general. I was told they are concepts made manifest. That their only goal is to spread the influence of that concept.”
“That’s true as far as we know,” Uriel confirmed, “Which means me being Chosen by him is meant to sow destruction everywhere I go.”
“Maybe, but I’m not so sure that’s really a bad thing,” she surprised him by saying softly.
Before he could retort, she looked up at him and added, “We destroy monsters all the time. We destroyed the Scarlet Banquet along with their plans. Daze and I just destroyed our relationship with the AOA… I think destruction might not always mean the end of everything, just the end of some things, and that’s okay.”
Uriel stared at her for a long moment, processing those words. He glanced around the room again to take in the swirl of elements that he originally thought of as a chaotic mess and wondered if there was something else tying them together. The fire torches lining the cracked walls, the stone frame of the bed with blood-red linens, the nonsensical tornado dancing in a corner, the snow gently dusting them with a light chill.
They were all adding to the maelstrom, just like his emotions.
You destroy everything you touch, those intrusive thoughts whispered in his mind again. You’ll destroy her in the end, just like your relationship with Daze.
He shook his head before looking back towards Phoenix and saying softly, “I hope you’re right. It’s just hard to believe when it feels like everything I care about gets destroyed. I don’t know how to put the things I break back together.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, tilting her head in adorable confusion.
“I’ve been thinking about it since our last talk about Daze. I think I might have overreacted. I tried putting myself in his place and thinking through how I might have done things differently. He was right; he wanted to protect everyone from dying and was willing to sacrifice himself in order to do so. I would have done the same… I have done the same. I’ve accepted the pain in place of others.”
He glanced down towards Phoenix’s hidden Soul Mark that rested over her heart and said, “You’ve done that multiple times, too.”
“I’m sorry I made you kill me,” she replied, wrinkling her nose in a way that made him want to use his thumb to smooth it out, “I saw how devastated you looked when you realized what happened. I didn’t mean to make you feel that way; it was just the only thing I could think of.”
He shook his head, looking back up at the ceiling, “I did hurt at first. I can’t deny the idea of being the one responsible for your final death has become a new personal nightmare of mine… but you’re alive, and I understood shortly after what the plan was —that I hadn’t actually murdered you or Daze. I think all that hurt and stress just made me lash out a bit too much. I tried to find something to blame. I shouldn’t have yelled at him like that. He wasn’t trying to hurt me.”
“I’m glad to hear that you’re going to forgive him,” she said quietly, “I just found out about something else he did and want to talk to him about, but hopefully, it will be a similar misunderstanding.”
Uriel glanced back down at her with a raised brow, and she shook her head. “I want to talk with him before I complain about it to others. Get his side of things. I’m trying to trust him a bit more, too, after everything that happened.”
“Well, I’ll let you go visit him first, then. I told him I’d wait until he was ready to talk. He’s in his room next door, though.”
She glanced up at him, “Are you trying to get rid of me?”
He chuckled, “Of course not, Princess. I just know we all want to get some rest.”
Phoenix looked back to the room, “Are you going to be okay in here alone?”
Uriel followed her gaze to take in his bedroom again before saying slowly, “Yeah. I think I’ll be okay,” he glanced back at her chaotic mess of red curls, noticing an odd black curl among them, and gently smiled, “Perhaps I can find the beauty in the chaos, too.”