C. Sebastian Nutt
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Chapter 137 - Muster
🕑 Added 2025-03-12 04:59:26 +0000 UTCHow was I to know my words would start a war? Should I have been put in charge of foreign diplomacy as the empire began to fall to ruin? No. Could I have refused Takanakan when he gave me the position? Also, no. As you can see, this sentencing is not a very just one, in my own opinion.
-Confession of Gabric Tarn, on the eve of his execution
My world of dull, aching misery is set on fire by a sunbeam slipping around the curtains and striking my closed eyelid. I groan, my entire body feeling stretched and pained. The smallest shift on the bed hits me with a momentary sense of vertigo before the ground hits me with a sense of cold pain and morning.
I squint through the slits of my eyelids, finding a vaguely green world with the occasional hint of orange and gold. A sticky crust keeps my lashes together, leaving me to rub away the night while reaching out for the bedsheet. Memory floods me with speed, but the remembrance only worsens the headache. Groaning, I tug myself to sitting, laying back against the pastel color bed, breathing deeply the vaguely perfumed air accented with dry sweat and the delicious smell of cooked meat.
The sun washes my half-naked body through the crack between the drawn curtains. The light is warm, and I drink that in as well as I sit. My focus runs away to the ache in my skull. Power drains away from me as I focus on the hurt, but the pain recedes as well. Like a weight lifting from my shoulders, I sigh out, opening my eyes to the sun with a clear head. Time to get up.
My guestroom in the duke’s manor is a mess. Pillows lay scattered all over the ground, one chair is stacked atop the table while another sits turned over next to it. An empty bottle pokes out from beneath the skirt of the bed, a shallow puddle of liquid staining the tile beneath its mouth. My dress lays discarded on a windowsill, looking as if someone spent all of ten seconds placing it nicely before turning to other matters. Then, I remember who that was, and what other matters I had last night.
I find myself alone in the room, a literal silver platter of breakfast food sitting on the bed table on the other side of the bed. I snag a top from my vault to cover myself before getting up and picking at the plate. My eyes linger on the left side of the bed, seeing the empty indentation there. I’m not exactly sure how to feel about that.
The manor is in full bustle by the time that I leave my room, having woken near noon. Most pay me little mind, but two armored men follow me throughout the halls as I take a trip to the gardens. They don’t speak to me when I approach them, but no matter where I go, they continue to follow.
I search for a few hours to find my friends, but end up getting nowhere, retreating to my bedroom to work on my own. They know where I am. Work inside my vault on my ongoing project's progress, the day slipping past unnoticed. Dovik is the one who finds me near dinner time, showing me the way to the dining hall where we meet up with Jor’Mari and Jess to have the last meal of the day.
Jor’Mari is odd, not distant, but refusing to be too friendly either. The thought that last night might have been too forward for him crosses my mind for a moment until I remember the man. He excuses himself as soon as the food is done, claiming that he is busy with family issues.
It doesn’t feel right to go out on the town without him that night, so I turn Dovik and Jess down when they invite me out to see the city with them. I could tell that Dovik was hoping to have Jess alone for the evening. The night passes without sleep, and it is far into the next day before Dovik pulls me from my work again. I don’t see Jor’Mari again that entire day, not until we all meet up to head to the Adventurer’s League Hall in the city the next morning.
What I wouldn’t give for the rocking of the cobblestones bumping the wheels of the carriage. Instead, the lurch of the carriage stopping and starting over and over again as shouts resound outside. Even more than a few days ago, Danfalla is choked with people, the crowds so bad that they move through the street, stifling the traffic. Trapped inside the carriage, I look across to the men sitting on the opposite bench. Dovik wears his annoyance while Jor’Mari looks out the window at those moving around our carriage like a river.
The vehicle lurches forward, axles creaking, only to come to a sudden stop less than ten feet along, the driver on the bench outside yelling a curse.
“I think I prefer the city at night,” I mutter.
“It wasn’t much better last night,” Jess says, sighing and laying her head back against the cushion.
“We could get there fast on foot,” I say.
“Well, that wouldn’t be very aristocratic of us,” Dovik says.
“Aristocratic?”
Jor’Mari pulls his attention from the window, shaking his head. “I’m not trying to make a statement with the carriage, but when we arrive, we likely want to look presentable.”
“Will we be arriving today?” I ask.
He scowls, looking back out of the window. “If Dovik starts waving his sword around we might be able to get this traffic moving.”
“You can’t do that with your name?” Dovik asks.
Another lurch and halt of the carriage pushes me past my limit. I stand, needing to crouch inside of the carriage to avoid hitting my head on the porcelain ceiling. “What does the league hall look like?”
Jor’Mari looks me up and down, rolling his eyes before opening the door of the carriage. A sweltering stink rolls in, the smell almost bad enough to make me reconsider. “It’s a big square building on the east side of the city, past the river. You won’t miss it.”
A dirt-smeared boy, maybe fourteen, leans his head into the open door, gawking at the inside of the carriage. My hand feels a bit grubby as I shove his face back out of the carriage, starting to take the brass steps down. I turn back, offering my hand to Jess. “Want a ride?” She snaps closed the book she is reading, taking my hand and letting me pull her out.
The feeling of the press all about me vanishes as two huge wings manifest, shoving the stream of traffic to the side. Without a glance back, I haul Jess up into the air with me, a huge flap of my wings taking us clear to roof level before I have to concentrate on the more magical aspects of my flight. Eyes below gawk up as I turn about in the air, trying to locate which direction is east.
“That way,” Jess says, pointing with her free hand while her other is wrapped tightly around my forearm.
The woman’s grip is a vice. “Is that comfortable?” I ask her.
“Will you carry me like an elven princess if I say no?”
“I thought you were a princess.”
She scoffs. “I’ve never had a vehicle this chatty before.”
If only she knew. I follow her pointing finger eastward, only feeling a slight strain as I carry us over the buildings below. If only I was allowed to use my ship inside of the city, we would never have to deal with any of the traffic.
Nowhere in Danfalla is safe from the crowding as we soar above. The bridges that span the river are the only places I can see the cobbles clearly from the air, due only to the guards at either end keeping the traffic across to a minimum. Quick movement below catches my eye. A man runs across the rooftops, racing at an impossible speed in the same direction as we are.
“It looks like he wants to make it a race,” Jess calls up to me, pointing out Jor’Mari running over the rooftops.
“He is competitive in that way.”
From the air, the trip to the league hall is not overly long. Ten minutes pass as I skim through the air, pulling on every ounce of speed that I have to keep up with the man below. Jor’Mari goes all out, navigating the rooftops in a practiced way, changing his form to grant him more speed. By the time we reach the expansive plaza in front of the guild hall, we are both plenty tired, neither of us winning.
“It is about time,” Dovik says, sitting on the sill of a large water fountain in the center of the plaza. “I have been here for minutes already. Minutes!”
“After having cheated, no doubt.” Jor’Mari claps him on the shoulder, his form slowly shifting back to its usual shape. There is a clear sheen of perspiration on the celenial’s brow, and as I descend from the air, setting Jess down on the stone, I find myself in little better condition. Perhaps Jor’Mari had a point about arriving presentably.
I take my first good look at the large square in front of the rectangular building that can only be the Adventurer's League Hall. The white stone leading up to the marble steps is kept clear of civilians by a line of guardsmen in ragged uniforms standing at the perimeter. Carts and carriages arrive at the iron gate one after another, offloading dangerous-looking people carrying even more dangerous-looking weapons. Some stop to admire the feature before making their way toward the front of the building, but there is an air of seriousness in those arriving, and the mood begins to infect me as well.
I set Galea to identifying everyone and cataloging their names. The vast majority of those arriving are essentia magicians, not one under rank two, but a few noblemen and women are wearing the rugged garb of the adventurer mixed in as well. Odder, for some of those whom I inspect I only get a name, no hint that they might be an endowed nobleman or an essentia magician at all. No one gives off any hint of being weak, and I take note of the odd ones out all the more for my being unable to understand them. Perhaps it is time to expand my understanding of power and how people claim it.
We join the movement of people up the steps and toward the open oaken doors leading into the hall itself. Two huge men stop us short at the entrance, only allowing us inside after seeing our silver badges. With The Warehouse back in Westgrove as my only point of comparison, I am surprised by what I find inside the hall.
Immediately past the entrance, we enter a stuffed foyer where people are hurriedly ushered to another room for the initial address. The building is fashioned from gray stone, polished to a mirror sheen, but the room we are let into is all of white marble. Silver chandeliers dangle overhead, the crystal hanging from their branches casting rainbow refractions in the light streaming in through the high windows. Tables covered with purple velvet line the room, more than half filled with men and women who for the most part look wildly out of place in the opulence. At the far end of the massive hall, a stage stands ten feet from the floor, covered with a lavender curtain drawn closed.
Dovik takes the lead, finding a still-empty table and claiming it for our team. Almost as soon as we have sat down, an elven man in a smart uniform appears from the crowd, taking drink orders from us before disappearing. I look about at the nearly two hundred people crowded into the room, more entering from the open doors at the back by the minute.
“This is not what I was expecting,” I say, getting a nod of agreement from Jess.
“It is a bit small,” Dovik comments, and I am entirely unable to tell if he is serious or not. His eyes flick over those on the floor, finally landing on a man several tables over, chatting pleasantly with one of the four women surrounding him while another holds his drink. “There’s one.”
I don’t even need to ask what he means as my eye lands on him. He is already looking over at us by the time I locate him, winking at Dovik before returning his attention to the women about him.
Caster Mattis<Level 113>(Rank Three)
Beast Conflux
“A rank three,” I can’t help but say.
“There will be more than a few,” Jor’Mari says. “We already had a good number running around the Duchy before the call went out. My family expects at least a dozen to answer the call. Those are who we are going to have to compete against if we want to do well in the tide.”
“Don’t count everyone else out,” Dovik says, continuing to scan the room. “There are several monsters in our rank as well.”
I hardly notice the man returning with our drinks and a basket of buttered bread for the table as I focus on the people in the room as well. Several auras stand out from the crowd, but there seems to be some pecking order to the way that people interact with one another by using their auras that I am unfamiliar with. The flare of the magical presence surrounding someone tells quite a bit about them, though I am not very skilled at reading it.
Dovik points out more among the mill that he thinks will be strong. It isn’t as if I can disagree with him; I simply can’t see whatever it is that he does. Galea does excellently in cataloging the room, storing away all of the information she can manage as we scan the adventurers filing in. A pair of names stick out to me as they slip inside, names I have seen before. The gangly blonde youth is familiar, but the tall and brawny woman standing next to him bears a name I saw before on an elven man–odd.
It isn’t as if we are the only ones scoping out the competition. At almost every table, at least one person is looking around the room while trying to appear as if they aren’t.
My scan of the room stops short as my eyes meet with one woman in particular. Her skin is a dark brown, deeper than any I have seen before, and her hair hangs in corded and black braids. What arrests me when I see her is her piercing eyes as our gazes meet. More specifically, her right eye is a perfectly black orb with a crossed blue iris.
Athemia Craelif<Level 78>(Rank Two)
Wargod Conflux
I know at once it is the same as my eye. She nods to me across the room, and I nod back. She looks about to stand at the same time I do, but before either of us can get out of our seats, a crack shakes through the air, coming from the stage. Quickly, the curtains begin to pull away. The muster is beginning.
