Unwieldy (Fantasy & Hammers)

[Sarius]

Chapter 70: Blessed Dreams

"I've never heard your accent before." Valeri said softly after we'd been sitting on a rooftop's edge for a while, greedily taking in the view of the city and the landscape beyond with our eyes as the sun grew brighter while Orisis threatened to snuff out the light.

"Really?" I said a little surprised. No one else had commented on my accent in ages, not since Mayer had asked about it, then Rethi and Alena in turn. She bobbed her head, the deep black and extremely dense hair wobbled floatily on her head as she did.

"Well, I do come from far away, so I guess that's to be expected." She turned to me, giving me a questioning look, though I disarmed the gaze with a small shake of my head. I had to keep that little secret, unfortunately.

"How…" Valeri struggled against her own question, desperately trying to not look too eager for an answer, and also feeling it burning within her chest. "How do you manage so many Gods?"

"I don't." She looked at me uncomprehendingly, "I'm probably not the best example to take from, Valeri. The Hearth Court and I have a very specific relationship that I'm not sure many will be able to hold. I'll need to know a little more before I can make a judgement." I smiled gently, a genuine emotion of warmth blooming in my chest. I don't know why, but I felt so much older than the girl sitting next to me who clearly had a few years on me. She struggled to answer, but just sighed and let the act fall away.

"My mother came here from Veringohs. She found a noble within the Brauhm Empire to marry, good enough for her royal blood." Valeri rolled her eyes, "The royal family in Veringohs is brutal, lots of murdering and conspiracy, so my mother and many of my aunts married out of the family and into others. My uncles are not so lucky." Seems even Veringohs has a dark side to it.

"Veringohs has their own pantheon of Gods, unlike the Brauhm Empire who only serve one. My mother followed a God. Tarania." She paused for a moment after saying the name, looking for any recognition on my face. I didn't know the name, though she spoke it with a strong accent almost similar to French.

"I'm sorry, I don't know of them."

"Her." She corrected lightly, then continued, "Tarania is a Goddess of Might and Strength. Though she is not a warrior." I raised an eyebrow.

"A Goddess of strength but not a warrior." I mused. Interesting, usually the two were effectively exclusive concepts, might almost entirely synonymous with military strength in a world like this, much the same as it was in the period on Earth like the Romans and the Greeks, and many more who were just the same.

"My mother had many stories of her. In one, Tarania's brother Rentara, who is the God of the Earth, was throwing a tantrum because a mountain he made was called ugly by one of his siblings, and he began to quake the earth to destroy it. Tarania went to go see the mountain that her brother had created, and found that was ugly, but that humans lived upon it in peace. They thrived there because of the concave in it that made it look ugly."

Valeri searched the distant rooftops with her eyes, shifting her bottom on the ledge that they were sitting on, legs dangling down the side of the building. I could feel a warm response in my divine energy, a brief recognition of the story within those of the Hearth that were watching.

"When the quaking began, and the mountain split in half to swallow the village whole, Tarania put her hands to the earth and pulled it back together against her brother's wishes. She saved the village and defied her brother to do so. She had Strength."

I sat with the profound story for a moment. It was simple and barebones. I'm sure that Valeri was paraphrasing as well, but it did hold a spark to it. An essence of what a God was, just as a warm tavern held a spark for the Hearth, the drunken jolly of the patrons whistling a tune. It wasn't the same sort of spark, this one being strong and independent, persevering and unquenchable.

"I see. A Goddess of Might, hm?" I mused again and Valeri nodded, looking down at the beautifully manicured hands that lay in her lap. A melancholic emotion swirling inside her chest, hidden beneath the layers.

"She always spoke so highly of Tarania. It makes me wonder why she left Veringohs in the first place. Why she left me here with father if she was only going to go back." I could feel the wound in her chest reopen as she said the sad words, but I let the emotion flow over me—keeping myself from being wrapped up in them.

"Any number of reasons could explain why she left. Any number of reasons could explain why someone might do something they believe is in line with the God they server but extends away from the God's wishes." Valeri sighed with frustration, pursing her pink lips in a pout.

"My mother said that she could speak with Tarania sometimes." She said abruptly, and the Gods of the Hearth who were listening in turned their attention more closely.

"That's an extraordinary feat." I said dully and turned to me with a 'no shit' expression.

"It'd be tantamount to being chosen by Tarania. But I think she lost her connection with Tarania after I was born." Valeri bit at her lip lightly, her emotions a swirling pit of emotion, not much of it really all that solidified. She was working through her past in front of my eyes, but I couldn't really help her with it. I may be able to see it all and work a room, but there weren't any magic words that'd solve someone's own issues.

The closest thing I had done was with Alena, and the moral reasoning for pushing the girl to use a power she was clearly terrified of was shaky at best. However, it did result in her understanding herself and her own power more, which I think is a net benefit for everyone.

"I don't know." I said, catching the girl's gorgeous eyes with mine and smiling sadly, "I couldn't possibly know why your mother did what she did, or why she lost the ability to talk with her God." I shrugged, even as she looked a little disheartened.

"But I don't care about all that. It's all stuff on the sideline, a curiosity to observe before the main show. You have more to tell me, and you're using this to preface it all." Valeri let a flash of anger cross her face. She felt like she was being mocked and goaded, like she had for years prior until she decided to hide her faith. The flash of understanding hit me, and I couldn't help but smile at the girl.

"Ah. You've been blessed, haven't you?" She flinched, but it was too late. The grasp on my hand being a little too tight. If I thought about it in terms of normal human grip strength, she'd have probably broken my hand, or at least given me some mean bruises. She was testing if too was blessed.

"By the way," I said with a half grin, "you might not want to pull the grip thing like you did with me. Any other Hearth blessed would probably just end up with a broken hand." Valeri was lost for words, her jaw hanging slack and a blush somehow making itself visible through her intensely pigmented skin.

"I was just making sure!" She exclaimed, ten different emotions waging war in her gut at once. "Nothing bad happened, so it's fine." I laughed at the grumbling girl before I pushed myself off the ledge while maintaining eye contact with her dark eyes.

Of course, I didn't let myself fall. That'd be stupid. I just walked across the lip of the building casually, openly defying gravity as I did so. The shock on her face and throughout her emotions was delicious, doing an excellent job of wiping the slate of her emotions clean. After a quick sidewards stroll, I hopped back up to the ledge, right next to the wide-eyed girl and whispered in her right ear, having been on the left only moments earlier.

"I might be a bit of a… special case."

She stammered for a second as she looked me dead in the eye like I was some sort of fairy tale creature, "W–what the hell. What kind of shifting even is that?" Her voice was only just barely constrained from yelling, so overwhelmed by the mind-bending display.

"Just a little trick I've been working on recently." I said with a wave of the hand, brushing it off like dust on my suit jacket. Obviously, she wasn't going to fall for the non-attempt at diversion.

"I know some earth shifting and know some experts in air shifting. Nothing I know could let me do that, and they can basically only make themselves run fast." Her piercing eyes were locked with mine, her mind not even registering that our faces were probably only centimetres apart, sitting at an extremely intimate distance.

"And how much do you train a day?" I asked her, and her eyebrow scrunched.

"An hour or two? I work on theory more." I just shrugged lackadaisically.

"I barely do any theory." The bewilderment sprung to her face, "Practice is key. I trained all day every day for the equivalent of years worth of time to be able to do things like these. You'd need to step up big time to match me, kiddo." The slight ribbing at the end made her scowl heartlessly.

"How do you expect me to do that, old man?"

"Prioritize." I said simply, face going dead serious, "You're blessed by a Goddess. I don't know what Tarania wants from you, but you have it easy because you've been blessed and you're stuck here, pussyfooting around on a rooftop with some random boy you just met." I spread my arms wide, forcing her to take in the whole world and bring it into perspective—the pure scale of it all, the majesty of Orisis as it eclipsed the sun, and the landscape as it was showered in the dribbles of light that escaped Orisis' grasps.

"You have all of this to go see, to explore, to find a world in, and you're letting yourself stagnate here despite being given every chance?" I tilted my head to the side as I looked the girl in the eyes, drawing my face close to hers, our noses only centimetres apart. "What is it that you're waiting for, Valeri Ephars?" She stared into my eyes with a hefty dose of wonder, so enraptured by my theatrics that she could barely stay self-aware enough to tame her expression.

"Someone like you?" She said breathily, the words slipping out between her lips before she could stop them. The light tint of red on her features exemplified just how embarrassing those words had been for her. I let out a gentle chime of laughter and began to walk along the side of the balcony again, one that we'd been allowed up to due to the clout of 'Lady Ephars'.

"And if a person like me never came? Would you simply sit in your little tower and mourn what could have been like a good princess?" The mocking words inspired a little anger from the girl, probably because she might have never been spoken to that way, but she did a good job at quelling it.

"I would have. I–" She cut herself off, almost biting her tongue. "I just don't know when." I snorted at the answer.

I made a sentence of movement, flinging myself across the balcony's side with a rush of speed, spinning in much the same way as a dancer might. I added grace and flow to the action, making it like a symphony of movement, the steps singing as I placed them. I looked briefly to the girl as she watched me move, and it was immediately obvious that she could hear them too. The sound of the movements.

"Bad answer." I said with a grin as I stopped myself, bending at my waist and righting my torso to look at her, tapping my foot impatiently. "So, you just expect me to whisk you away on an adventure, to extricate you from all your problems and give you something nice and juicy to work on?" I felt the build-up of kinetic energy slowly wear off, making my body fall backwards, unable to sustain its fight against gravity. Valeri yelped as I fell towards the street, but I quickly caught myself with another sentence that allowed me to sneak my form underneath the balcony. With a few quick movements, I flipped back onto the balcony, right-side up, and approached the girl from behind.

"But I won't give you that." The tall dark-skinned woman just about screamed in surprise, turning to face me with her hand to her chest. "You need to earn that." My face lost all humour and hers did too.

"What do I need to do?" She asked in a whisper, a feeling of deep-seated shame washing over her. I doubt she's had to ask something so subserviently before, but the fact that she's willing to do it at all just means that she'd invested.

"Easy," I laughed gently as I stared at her with a beguiling smile, "you're going to have your ass handed to you on a silver platter."


A/N: This chapter marks the day I broke chapter 100 on Patreon. That's a lot of chapters. Here's to many more, my dear reader.

Thank you to my two 5-dollar Patrons; Bisque and Thaldor! A massive thanks to my two 10-dollar Patrons; TheBreaker, and Dyson C.! A gargantuan thanks to my two 20-dollar Patrons Marisa E. and Thomas H.!

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[Sarius]

Chapter 71: Valeri

Valeri Ephars hadn't been able to sleep properly for days. It wasn't due to her bed being of any inferior quality, or it being too hot or too cold, Gods know that her life was the picture of luxury—far in excess of anything you'd legitimately need to survive. It was the memory of that man that she couldn't shake from her mind.

Valeri had thought herself almost impervious to the whims of others, having dealt with the crooning and bootlicking her entire life. Her father was intensely rich and powerful, of course; a man of pure capitalism and greed, seeking just another way to earn coin. He wasn't quite so uncouth as to dip his hand into the slave trade, but he was certainly willing to cut some moral corners to line his own pockets.

Jitah Ephars was a man that attracted a very particular kind of attention, and Valeri just so happened to be the best way to earn access to the man. Everyone wanted Valeri's hand in marriage from the moment she was born, anything to earn the expertise of the man capable of turning anything into a successful business.

Valeri was ultimately conflicted by her father. He was cold and indifferent, too interested in his own personal gain to even be dismayed when Valeri's mother had left them behind in Crossroads. But every now and then she'd see a spark of kindness, of love in her father's eye.

Then there would be months where she'd only see the man at dinner twice, and those times were spent in silence. Maybe if she was willing to approach him on the grounds of running businesses, he'd be able to talk to her, but otherwise they were left to sit in silence and a mutual awkwardness.

She knew that her father wasn't normal, and probably never would be. There were sacrifices he made to be as powerful as he was, and maybe the greater sacrifice was that he never saw them as sacrifices in the first place.

But that left Valeri with nothing, no future other than to be a bargaining chip for her father's political of economic gains, even if he hadn't made use of her yet. The temptation was there, even for Valeri. If she were to allow her to be bargained away, even to involve herself whole heartedly in the process, she could find herself as one of the most powerful women on Virsdis by her father's age. She had no doubt that she'd be able to get to the point where a wave of a hand would start a war.

Yet, Valeri was a follower of Tarania, and that future didn't seem very mighty. To just go with the tide that others had set for her.

That was why she was going to the meeting that the man had set, despite her mind screaming at her. It was a terrible idea from every point of view she could take, the enigma of a man had appeared from nowhere and had swept her up in a whirlwind of a night, just to set a date and a location for her to arrive at.

Valeri hadn't been so mystified by someone since she was barely a child, when she'd found herself with a massive crush on a very handsome butler's apprentice. The boy had been a charismatic mess, all smiles and secret, but with a terrible habit of slipping his hands into drawers and taking what was not his.

She remembered how she'd cried when her father had taken his right hand, only letting the boy have his life at her insistence. It was one of the only times that her father had strayed from his own iron rhetoric, a moment that she now morbidly cherished.

Valeri pulled herself from the tantalising embrace of her plush bed, walking towards her dresser and procuring from it the clothes she had specifically acquired just to make it to this meeting. She was awake far earlier than she'd been in years, the drowsiness of sleep hanging over her mind and making her eyelids quake under its weight.

As she dressed herself with the commoner's clothes and travelling cloak, she lambasted herself in her mind. This was ridiculous, on all accounts. The man had taken her by the heart and was leading her around like a head of sheep with it. It was embarrassing and humiliating, but that same mystique that led her to even buy the clothes still remained in her mind.

As Valeri threw on the last of her clothes, she turned to the small pack that had been put together for her—much of what was inside was really for emergency cases where this wasn't a simple meeting and was more in the league of a kidnapping attempt. Though her heart knew that it wasn't going to be anything so nefarious, her mind was fixated on the possibility, with more than twenty examples for her to gain the paranoia from.

Just as she completed her outfit, pulling her mass of unruly hair into tight bunches, a light set of knocks were placed on her large wooden door.

"Come in." She said calmly, having expected the knocks. With a prompt speed, a slightly older man walked into the room without hesitation. He was maybe thirty-five, closing in on forty at the high end, but was the closest thing to a father that Valeri had experienced in a long time.

"Good morning, Miss Ephars." The man stated neutrally with a bow, but Valeri could read the subtext in the greeting. She shook her head quietly, sighing as she fixed a particularly irritating piece of hair away with a handy pin.

"No, I will not reconsider, Yeram." The man released himself from the tight bow and stood a little more relaxedly, but with the same propriety as he always did.

"I did not say anything, Miss Ephars." Valeri scoffed, rolling her eyes all the while.

"You don't need to say a word to get the message across, Yeram. How long do you think you've been my personal attendant?" Valeri didn't wait for the man to respond, though her would certainly have answered with exact precision, down to the day, "This is no different from when you've subtly commanded me to go back to my economics classes."

"I believe that this is quite different." Yeram said coolly, "You are putting yourself in a great deal of danger doing this, Lady Ephars." Valeri scowled intensely at the ever-polite man, his pale skin and slowly greying hair only adding to his authority as he aged.

"Don't you 'Lady Ephars' me, Yeram."

"Then please reconsider attending this meeting. You have no idea who this might–" The glare that Valeri fixed him with made his jaw close with a click, realising that he was beginning to overstep in his speech. Valeri grinded her teeth for a moment, letting the quietly powerful muscles in her cheeks show her frustration, but it didn't last.

"Yeram…" She began softly, looking away from her personal attendant, "You haven't met him. I don't expect you to understand what it was like when he looked at me. It was something else entirely, like something even greater than a King was observing me." Valeri paused, her face grimacing as her mind desperately reached for words that would even describe a moment of the sensation that she'd bathed in while in the man's company.

"It was magical, Yeram, and yes I understand how it sounds." She almost snarled at the man before he had the chance to ask the question in the first place. "Everything in me wants to pick apart the experience, to denigrate it and eventually ignore it as a flight of fancy, or an adrenalin fuelled fever dream, but I can't." The room was laden with silence for a moment, the young lady's attendant waiting patiently to see if she was going to say anything more but nodded quietly when she didn't.

Yeram was a man of caution and expertise. He was much more than a personal attendant, and caution was a defining feature of his mindset, and caution made him extremely good at his job. But when he was placed up against that face of Valeri's, it caused a conflict inside of him that drew his every emotion into a grand war. It was the exact same conflict that he'd struggled with when he'd once apprenticed that young boy, and the same conflict that had allowed the boy to get away with slipping his fingers into pockets for far too long.

"Do you fancy him, Valeri?"

The simple question rocked Valeri to her core. She whipped her head around to look at the older man, a crease of worry prominent in his brow. Yeram had called Valeri by her first name only a handful of times in her entire life, leaving it for the most important moments. Valeri swallowed against a sudden dryness in her throat, turning away from the man with too many expressions waging war on her face.

"I don't know." She answered after a moment. Yeram bobbed his head quietly after his own pondering, the man taking a step back and letting his form relax ever so slightly.

"I see."

After all the words that needed to be said had been spoken, Valeri made to leave her room with quick and restless steps, trusting in her attendant that he'd cleared the way to the hidden back door so that she'd be able to leave silently in the early morning. However, just as she grabbed the handle of her door, her attendant's voice rang out in the silence, almost startling her.

"Lady Valeri. You may wish to take your rapier." She turned to the man, who was now holding the training rapier she normally wielded, extending its handle out to her with a severe expression on his face. She took the rapier quickly, and quickly left the room and followed the path that she'd always taken out of the house when she wanted no one to know of her departure.

The lavish halls she walked through were obscenely wide, freezing cold with the night's chill still being held by the marble flooring. The cold air just made her feelings towards her home more apparent, almost achingly so.

She walked down through a service door that had been promptly left open for her to walk through, striding down the narrower corridors that ran through the house unseen. In only a few moments she was outside, practically jogging through the small path through the expansive gardens that her father paid mind-boggling amounts of money to keep.

Then she found herself on a path towards the northern road, the gated community on this road contained some of the richest and most powerful people outside of the Brauhm Empire's elite. It was with ease that she procured herself a horse that she'd use for the trip into the city, and from then it was only a short travel to her destination.

While a lone rider was hardly common, it didn't raise any eyebrows, especially with the commoner's clothes and travelling cloak that Valeri wore. She reached the city centre, and quickly cross referenced her internal compass with the one illustrated through tile in Crossroads' centre. She turned to her right, leading down the western arm of the city, and committing to the short ride out into the fields to the south-west of the city.

The nerves were building, and had been building for a while, the concept of meeting that man again had her mind in jumbles, desperately trying to reconcile how she felt with the situation. But, woefully, Valeri was not given the time to truly examine herself, her horse quickly blazing out of the city limits and quickly making headway into the fields that surrounded the city, past the homesteads that sat just outside the city, quietly existing.

She kept riding, the horse being exceptionally fit for the task, but as the kilometres flew underfoot, she was left with a quiet doubt, building in her chest. She scanned the periphery as best she could, and despite being able to see great lengths in the fields, she saw nothing of the tall form that he sported.

After another ten minutes of riding, she found herself riding towards a stream of gently moving water that could only be considered a creek. She followed it for a while, feeling the time slowly trickle through her fingers as she searched, each passing moment adding just a little bit of doubt.

"You actually came." Valeri jolted, almost spooking the horse with the movement, whipping her head around to see a much smaller form than the man that she knew.

"Who are you?" She asked warily, clutching onto the reigns, and preparing to force the horse into a gallop at a moment's notice. The smaller man looked up towards her, dressed in traveller's clothing just as she was. Underneath the long and dark cloak, a blank metal mask was visible, the only features on it being a small slit for the mouth and two eyeholes that allowed the man's blazing green eyes to peer through with all their intensity.

"Master Maximilian sent you here." The man said gravely. The voice wasn't deep or remotely resonant like that man's had been at moments, but it held a different sort of seriousness and gravity that weighed on Valeri's shoulders despite herself.

"Who are you?" She asked again, both of the participants of the conversation not willing to yield to the other's will. The shorter man looked at her for a long, tense moment, and as he made to respond, a strange glow began to burn in his eyes—brighter even than the iridescent green of his natural eye colour.

"You can call me Midday." He said solemnly, the slight glow in his eyes suddenly became brighter than the morning sun, the overwhelming gold making Valeri shiver with a sudden understanding of just how powerful they promised he'd be. She swallowed, desperately trying to wet her tongue so she could speak clearly.

"I am Val." She said, trying to obscure her identity from the man's eyes, but even as the false name fled her lips, she couldn't help but feel as if it were nothing beneath his gaze—a mere mockery of his exacting eyes.

"You are nothing." The words radiated with a dominant power that undulated forth from the cloaked man, forcing her and the horse to stay perfectly still and commanding their entire attention.

"Leave your horse here, he will not stray too far." Midday's words were almost gentle in comparison to the words preceding them, "We will see if you are worth any of my master's time."

The shorter man turned and walked away with a sure step, his figure glowing ever so slightly with a golden light that made goosebumps cover her arms while she looked at it. She did as she was told, dismounting from the horse quickly and following after the surprisingly fast man, only now realising that she was almost half a foot taller than the intimidating man.

What a spectacularly befuddling day this already was.


A/N: Thank you to my three 5-dollar Patrons; Bisque, Christian P., and Thaldor! A massive thanks to my three 10-dollar Patrons; TheBreaker, Benjamin V.E., and Dyson C.! A gargantuan thanks to my two 20-dollar Patrons Marisa E. and Thomas H.!

If you want to support me, and receive up to 90 total chapters in advance, check out my Patreon!

 

[Sarius]

Chapter 72: Oath

Valeri stumbled to the ground uselessly, as if her legs were gone from beneath her. Without the physical strength to get her arms up to stop her fall, her chin smacked into the ground with a significant amount of force. The blow sent a shock of disorientation through her body, all of her limbs unable to anything but flail uselessly beside her as she tried to force them to work.

Even if her mind wanted to get up from the ground, it was only an instinct that drove her now. The actual stubbornness had left her quickly against the stone wall that the shorter man had become to her. Thought even as she managed to get a limp arm underneath herself and pushed herself to her feet for the hundredth time, she could make herself do it anymore.

She couldn't look into his eyes.

The divine gold intermingling with the burning green always sent a deep sense of inferiority to her very core. The bright light that surrounded Midday had stayed continued to be just that, as bright as the midday sun. From the early morning until far into the depths of the night, Midday shone with an unerring power, only truly seeming at home while the sun had been truly uncovered by Orisis in the sky.

"Is this the end, Valeri?" The distinctly young voice called, something that had grated on the girl's conscious for the entire day. The man, while embodying everything that she would consider a man to be, was too young. An almost mortifying possibility would be if the boy was younger than even she was. Thus, leading Valeri to secretly hope that Midday was simply a very short man.

"I can keep going." She said, iron still in her voice. It was the benefit of being a blessed with Might, that unerring disposition was something that Valeri hadn't found all too useful until today. She couldn't force her eyes up to meet the man's anymore, but she could feel the powerful gaze on her.

"Good." The powerful word came to meet her again, along with a blow faster than she could truly react to. She took the blow to her gut, letting the blow wind her like they all had before, and prepared to strike at the man with the training rapier that she had used for years.

Of course, she didn't hit Midday. The blade, though dulled, was still enough to do a significant amount of damage with though that hardly deterred the metal masked man from toying with it like it was nothing more than a twig.

He would brush the blade off with the back of his knuckles and even then, it wouldn't even do so much as graze him. It was infuriating, the total lack of care for an art she'd practiced for a good portion of her life. She'd had teachers who were the best around, and she had even managed a few matches against them—yet Midday was a lord above them all.

It was humiliation supreme when the blade she'd professed to be skilled in was so useless against the man across from her, even as he used nothing but his hands. Then, as well, it was pride of the highest order that she still used it, despite her complete lack of effectiveness against Midday's dominance.

She let that frustration override her, as she struck out with the rapier's tip once again. Midday dodged it smoothly, smoother than she'd seen any but the most proficient of dancers move. If the blade was of no use, then she had no choice but to abandon it.

The lunging rapier was left to clatter to the ground as Valeri felt her body tighten together and sneak closer to the radiant man, her fist rocketing out as she drew close enough to strike.

That was when her fist made contact with Midday's palm, and like flesh against rock, it did nothing. When Midday's surprisingly gentle grasp surrounded her fist, she realised that her hand was trapped, just as she was.

"Well, that certainly took you long enough." Midday's voice rang out harshly as he let go of the fist that he'd wrapped in his grasp. Valeri quickly retreated a few steps, eyes covering the man's body, looking for a sign of any movement. The man's movement was as esoteric as his master's, Maximilian. Though he didn't seem to have the same astounding closeness to the art of it, making Midday's movement seem like a pale likeness in comparison.

"Are you going to stand on guard all day?" The cutting voice spoke again, just a little too high pitched for Valeri's pride to accept, desperate to consider Midday a man. Her eyes glanced up to Midday's face, the golden light still poured off of him and from his eyes, but it was no longer the oppressive light that it used to be.

"I can continue." Valeri said, gritting her teeth even as she said it, but Midday just shook his head.

"Probably." He stated, a raised eyebrow was evident even underneath his mask, "But, frankly, you don't have it in you to learn much more than you have today." Valeri's face darkened with the implication that she wasn't up to the task, but Midday just flashed with the golden light again, shutting her up.

"You have no idea what constitutes actual training." He paused to wait for Valeri to look directly at him again, then continued, "You have trained with a weapon that doesn't suit you, totally ignoring the strengths of your own blessing and the resources that you have available to you. Master told me a lot about you, and the only reason why I believe you are worth anything is because he said so."

"Why am I not worth anything?" Valeri snarled, indignancy rising to the top of a fetid pool of emotion, "Why are you worth more than me, Midday?" As soon as the flash of anger was gone, Valeri's jaw clicked as it closed, a cold dread washed over her body, though she was too prideful to possibly take back her words now.

"You have no idea what you're talking about, Valeri." Midday's voice warned as his eyes adjusted to capture her own gaze in a stranglehold, "It's not that I was ever worth more than you. It's that I wasn't, and you should be." Midday walked closer to her, each step forced Valeri to move back another step as well, his purposeful strides overpowering her shaky, unsure ones. Each of Midday's footfalls felt like its own tremor through the earth, even though Valeri knew that it wasn't real. It wasn't real, but it felt as if she was being approached by a giant.

"W– What's that even supposed to mean?" Valeri gasped as she tripped on nothing and fell backwards into the dirt like she had a hundred times during the day. Her eyes remained locked with Midday's; the golden light almost made it feel as if her face was burning with its intensity.

"You sit in your tower, warm and fed at night." The light around him dimmed, the darkness around him seeped in ever so slightly, "You worry about what coin will be pinched from your horde as those on the street starve. You sit in your tower, observing it all, yet you receive a blessing. For what?" Midday asked, his voice cold with disdain.

"I don't know!" Valeri yelped, almost as if she were being struck, "I don't know why I was given a blessing it was given in my sleep!" The green eyes burned into her, the pure criticism in them was something she'd never felt in her entire life, it was something that she was sure that she'd see as she closed her eyes for a long time.

Midday straightened his posture entirely, looking down on her from above like a King from on high, peering down at a foolish peasant who understood nothing and was worth even less. "Yet you have the gall to do nothing, to stay ignorant and foolish?"

Valeri wished so badly to answer the barbed question, but she couldn't. She had kept the secret of her blessing so well that even she had forgotten it at times, and if not for that little piece of twine that still connected her to Tarania, she'd have allowed herself to forget entirely.

"Disappointing." Midday decreed; the power of the word radiated throughout her entire being—scorching her worse than any fire possibly could.

What could she say to that? To a word that so wholly summed up her entire self, that defined her so completely. It was the most painful thing someone had ever called her, despite so much of her life revolving around the meticulous and callously crafted insults of Crossroads' wealthy. It felt like she'd had her skin stripped from her muscle, flayed with impunity, and treated like nothing else but the cattle would be.

Midday only looked at her for a while, before removing his overpowering gaze and walking away from her slack form to Gods only know where. Valeri felt the desire to ask one last question, the burning in her chest coming from more than just her muscles.

"How?" She said finally, her voice cracking lamely even with Might granted by a Goddess. Midday stopped his walk, letting the faint glow that surrounded him die—making the man almost entirely indistinguishable from any other person on the street.

"You come tomorrow." And then he was gone, moving at a speed that Valeri didn't have good enough eyesight to track in the dark.

Valeri could do nothing but walk painfully to her horse and ride home, each jolt that travelled through the horse would send her body through a shockwave of colliding pain, more than she'd been in her entire life.

She reached the back door of her home that she'd left through, knocking in a specific pattern on the door. In only a moment, the door swung open to reveal a hefty woman in her early sixties.

"Ma'am," the woman said gently, before allowing Valeri to slide an arm over her shoulder, standing much shorter than the dark-skinned woman. Valeri knew the woman, and had almost her entire life, she even knew her name, though she'd never used it.

Valeri had never come home in such a state, the worst being when she'd gone to a 'secretive' party with some others of her generation and had managed to spectacularly ruin her own dress, to where she was legitimately indecent in the foppish thing. The servant had helped her every time, doing absolutely anything she could to for Valeri, to make her comfortable in what had been a harrowing moment for her.

Though, Valeri could only assume that the woman was quite shocked to see her beat up the way she was, skin scrapped up like nothing, but a fight could produce. Bruises, cuts, blisters, the whole nine yards.

"Uaele…" Valeri said hesitantly after the woman somehow hauled her through the corridors to an empty room. The shock on the woman's face would have made Valeri's day if the day had been anything else, but it wasn't.

"You know my name, Lady Ephars?" The older woman, Uaele, said with a hitch of surprise or worry in her voice. Valeri grimaced as she tried desperately to move into a more comfortable position, though her body had decided that now was the time to totally crash and be useless.

"Yes, I learnt it when I was ten," Valeri said quietly, but didn't expand on the statement. "I know you must have things to do, or family to be around, but–" Uaele, her eyes flashing in understanding, held up a silencing finger and rushed from the room post-haste. Valeri eased herself up against a wall that the bed she'd been placed on was flush against. She didn't dare let herself lay down on the bed truly, the only possible outcome being that she'd fall asleep.

It was only a few moments later when Uaele bustled back in the room with more genuine liveliness than Valeri had ever seen on any of her household's servants, aside from Yeram—if you considered a slight crinkle of his eyes to be lively.

"Alright, let's get your clothes off!" Uaele said, placing down a small pail of water along with some other items on the room's supplied table. Valeri, having never been bathed or seen by any others naked, was too shocked to even yelp as the older woman practically tore the clothes off of her—somehow managing to make what would seem like a lengthy and painful process as easy and painless as taking off a sock.

"Ouch, those must have hurt," the woman said kindly, a soft and worried voice carrying to Valeri's ears as Uaele gently pressed around the many wounds on her skin. Valeri hissed in pain, but the woman ignored the expression with only an apologetic murmur. After a few moments, Uaele was gently washing Valeri's wounds with mercifully warm water, carefully and methodically cleaning her body.

Valeri, overly anxious of the woman's view of her almost totally bare body, sans underwear, almost shrieked when the woman began to clean at the smattering of wounds and scrapes on her breasts.

"Oh, calm down! You're a little girl now, are ye?" The tough old lady's voice said instinctively, before going ramrod straight as she realised what she'd said, and who she'd said it to. But before Uaele could apologise for her grand misstep, Valeri couldn't help but let the compressed laughter burst through her nose in surprise—the motion instantly making her groan with pain multiple times as she alternated between laughing and cringing with pain.

Uaele didn't hold for much longer herself, barely containing a warm, full-bodied laugh by grasping at her knees as her body shook in restraint. The hilariousness of the statement had somehow opened a whole new world to Valeri, a sudden sonder striking her as she realised that each and every one of her household's employees were like this in some way or another. A brusque mothering from Uaele was all it took for her to realise that.

Valeri let the wizened woman continue her work, her hands moving methodically from wound to wound and applying and of a handful of different salves and mixtures to them. Valeri would have believed that the woman was a medic of some sort before she worked here, if a qualified medic weren't paid far more than a simple maid would be within her household.

"You do this often?" Valeri asked with a cautious curiosity, managing to get the words out despite the pain.

"Oh, once upon a time, darlin'." Uaele said happily, "When you have two sons who like to scrap with the other neighbourhood boys, you'll be doing lots of this!" Valeri chuckled along with the woman, though she found herself wondering if she would ever have to do such a thing when she could simply get a trained servant to do so. Suddenly that idea felt hollower than it practically should, like there was a sudden loss of warmth and compassion in such an intimate action.

"Your sons, are they…?" Valeri said tentatively, yet Uaele looked up at her sadly, the pure sorrow in the woman's eyes was something that she felt resonate in her chest, like a drum being struck mightily atop a mountain and to hear a different drum resound back from the mountain standing opposite.

"No, honey." Uaele's hands stopped moving for a moment, only to begin again in short order. They stayed in silence for a while, letting the sorrow integrate into the atmosphere comfortably.

"Is… is it that bad out there?" Valeri asked as she let her dark eyes scour the older woman's face, "Am I truly living in an ivory tower?"

The pitying glance in place of a reply was enough. Valeri hated being treated like a fragile thing, as if an errant blow would crack her skin or break her bones, but today she'd been beaten so thoroughly by Midday that it'd destroyed her entire perception on what it meant to be treated like a porcelain teacup. Midday had held back in every sense of the word, clearly capable of doing far more than what he'd done to her.

"I'm sorry, Uaele." Valeri said quietly, a flood of emotions springing forth from the pool within her chest and making her entirely incapable of stopping it from leaking form her eyes. There was nothing graceful about those emotions, nothing pretty of beautiful. They were the infected remains of what she'd repressed her entire life, and even as Uaele pulled Valeri's much taller form into her gratuitous bosom it wasn't quelled.

"It's alright darlin'." The woman whispered gently into her ear, over and over again. It soothed the pain, but only affirmed Valeri's stance, each word from the mouth of the woman who pitied her innocence, even when she had somehow believed in the innocence of the world despite knowing full well that the world outside her towers wasn't as peaceful as it appeared from above it all.

No, it wasn't alright, Valeri decided. It wasn't alright that the world was this way, and that she did nothing about it. It wasn't alright that the woman who'd lost her sons, however it'd happened, was comforting the sheltered princess like she would a babe with a teat.

No. It wasn't alright, and Valeri was going to change it.

She swore that she would.


A/N: Thank you to my 5-dollar Patrons; Bisque, Christian P., Kristof D., and Thaldor! A massive thanks to my 10-dollar Patrons; TheBreaker, Benjamin V.E., Puppet424, and Dyson C.! A gargantuan thanks to my 20-dollar Patrons Marisa E. and Thomas H.!

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[Sarius]

Chapter 73: Blade

Rethi spent a long time lying in bed that night, or morning depending on how much of a stickler you were.

The small but comfortable room within the Skinned Lizard was a blessing for today, the bed being just large enough to fit him and Alena within its sheets, allowing them to comfort each other as they drifted into the realm of sleep. Maximilian had always acted oddly around the topic of Alena and Rethi, most of the time poking fun at the couple.

It was a strange sentiment to Rethi, that their relationship would be seen as fledgling in the way that Max saw it. It was probably a holdover from his life back on Earth, something about the concept of a child being much different there—something that he'd never graced Rethi with the details on.

Rethi's extreme awe for the man had slowly simmered down over the past while, though the introduction of his master's literal Demigodhood certainly made it difficult to tone down too much. But now, Rethi held more of a strong respect and loyalty to the man, rather than a rabid piousness that he was leaning more towards earlier on in their relationship.

Maximilian was a good man, placed against impossible odds. Every time that Rethi interacted with his master, there was always something different about the conversation than the others that he had. It was something almost entirely indescribable, except for the feeling of excitement and energy that was derived from it. It was Maximilian's selling point, as a person. Always listening, always contemplating, and always ready to give an answer to the best of his abilities for your own benefit.

The past day, however, had tested Rethi in a way he hadn't expected to be tested.

In that little road town, it had been difficult to form opinions of nobility and the finer classes. The older townsfolk had their choice words to say about them, some good and some bad, depending on the encounters that they and their friends have had with the mystical upper classes.

Rethi was too young and lived too desperate a life to care back then, but now he felt that every step he took widened his perception of the world a mile. In the past weeks of travel, he'd met more people than he'd known his entire life, so many that he couldn't possibly remember the names and faces of everyone he'd met or had any interaction with.

It was a scary concept at first, though he kept the fear to himself, the fear that he'd end up in a place and recognise no-one and nothing—a transient in a world not meant for him. Rethi could only guess that Maximilian had seen those emotions in him to some degree, whether consciously or unconsciously.

The first time Rethi had set foot in Crossroads, it had blown his mind. There were so many people, hundreds visible on the streets at any given time of day, the chatter and noise were ever present, the salesmen and women constantly hawking their wares to a barely attentive crowd.

It was earth-shattering, yet Maximilian barely even flinched, reminding Rethi of the stories he'd managed to pry from the man's guarded lips. One time he'd even given Rethi a number, five million, that was the estimate for how many people lived in the city he had once lived in. The paltry number of people within Crossroads barely touched upon the magnitude of a number so massive that it took a significant amount of time for Rethi to even put it into context.

Maximilian had taken them to the Skinned Lizard that night, forcing them to confront the minority population of Crossroads immediately. Rethi had never seen a Reptilia, the only travellers coming from the south being various shades of human. The boy had been terrified that he was encroaching on their ground, territory unknown to him, but his mind was sorted out in short order.

He couldn't say that he was entirely comfortable being around Reptilia, even if he wholeheartedly accepted them and their plight within Crossroads, even enjoying the company of Tenra, the Tiliquan man, and Gehne, the Gek waitress. It was some small part of himself that he couldn't quite be rid of something he solved by ignoring its existence within him and hope would simply go away someday.

Rethi was being forced to make opinions of the world around him, despite wishing he could simply stay as a neutral party to the world, as he once was. Wish as he might, things were fed into his ears by osmosis, the simply act of walking down a street would teach you a lot about the place you were in, what the people were like, who held the power, who hated who.

Merchants in Crossroads were rich, some being the executors of entire companies, focused on obtaining money and power, only to gain more money and power. In a way, he saw a link between himself and them, an acknowledgement of how easy it'd be for him to do exactly the same as they have done.

But as Rethi learnt more about the rich and their power, and namely how they obtained it, his standards set themselves higher and higher.

They were rich beyond imagining, for the once poor boy. He held in his packs a small fortune, enough to live a downright luxuriant life off of, but their wealth dwarfed even that, far in excess of anything someone could possibly need.

And for what?

Rethi had fostered the contempt over the days they spent in Crossroads, quickly aligning himself to be on the side of the 'commoner', on the side of the persecuted and maligned. The meeting between Maximilian, himself, and the owner and staff of the Skinned Lizard had only furthered that opinion. Rethi had slowly come to understand just how much of the issues that the regular folk dealt with had a root cause in what the ludicrously rich were doing.

So, when Maximilian had told Rethi of his escapades within the northern sectors, Rethi had almost been confused. He'd excepted his master to somehow get the information that they, along with those of the Skinned Lizard, needed to formulate some plan to shake the broken system to its core.

Yet, Rethi's master had told him of a young and extraordinarily rich woman and told him that he was going to train her. In combat. It had befuddled the boy. Why would he possibly teach a person like that to fight? What good would that possibly do?

Nevertheless, he agreed even if he did make a point to argue. Though, Maximilian had pulled out the magic words, the words that worked on Rethi every time—the same ones that had first convinced Rethi to stab the man, dealing a mortal wound to the nigh immortal Champion.

"Trust me."

So, he did. Rethi trusted his master, even going so far as to create a character, commission a mask and do the whole thing discreetly. It scratched the boy's itch for mysterious beings, much like the Keeper that he'd once met—something he had to constantly remind himself that it'd even happened at all with the sheer absurdity of it.

Then he had met the woman he was to train, only having Maximilian's comprehensive briefing to go on by that point. She was… disappointing.

Rethi shifted within the sheets of the bed, wrestling with the desperate want to sleep, and the reluctance of his body to relinquish itself to the bed's comfort. With a sigh, Rethi slid from the sheets wearing nothing but a pair of undergarments, something that Alena had bought from one of Oscar's many friends. Rethi wouldn't admit it, but they had totally changed his life, and there was absolutely no way he could be forced out of them and back into the horrifying clutches of what he used to wear.

Rethi paced for a bit, the wooden floorboards under his feet creaking with each step as he almost muttered with thought. Alena shifted in the sheets and it was only after a minute or two that he realised that she was staring directly at him, her blue eyes shining with the dull light of night.

"What's wrong?" She said softly, not a word of complaint or frustration, only pure worry, and care. This was the side of Alena that no-one else saw, aside from the rare moment that Maximilian might've observed.

"I'm training that girl, the merchant's daughter." Rethi's jaw clenched with the sentence, a mixture of frustration and… something else that even Rethi couldn't quite identify.

"Valeri, right?" Alena murmured as she sat up in the bed, her back resting against the bedhead and the pillows, pulling the sheets around her to guard her from the chill of the early morning.

Rethi nodded, running a hand over his face, "I just don't understand! Why am I out there training some rich girl how to do things when we could be…" Rethi scrunched his face up and gestured wildly, "doing literally anything! Me and Master Max could wipe out the gangs in a night if we wanted, what's stopping us?" Alena hummed tiredly, but when her gaze locked with his, it was entirely alert—Rethi could almost see that calculator in her mind racking up an invisible set of numbers, flexing the muscles of her powerful mind. Yet another side people never got to see of the girl.

"Rethi," she said quietly, patting a spot on the bed and telling him to sit, "I think that's what he wants to avoid." Rethi bottled his instinctive response until he had sat cross legged on the bed, letting Alena search his calloused and powerful hand with her gentle fingers.

"But why? We could fix so much! We could–" Alena shook her head, stopping the boy dead, feeling his argument fall apart with the simple shake of her head, the black locks swaying from side to side.

"If Maximilian thought that was a reasonable course of action, he'd have already done it, Rethi." Alena sighed, "I hate to defend the man, he hardly needs defending, but he's a literal Demigod of the Hearth, Rethi. You do know what the mere priests are called on Orisis, right?"

"Peace Bringers." Rethi said, remembering the title being thrown around in the meeting with the Skinned Lizard group. They had high hopes that Max was one of them, or something close enough.

"Exactly." She said clearly, "I don't know much about the legends, I'd have thought you would know them better than I. But in the fairy tales my father would tell me, they would roam from kingdom to empire, mediating discussions and stopping catastrophes from every happening in the first place. They are said to have saved more lives than any hundred legendary warriors ever have, Rethi." The words were succinct, Alena's opinion clear on the subject. Rethi didn't even need to ask if Max could be considered a Peace Maker, his master being so much more than that.

"So, I just… do nothing?" Rethi said, conflicted. Alena sighed again, conflict showing on her pretty features and grabbing a hold of Rethi's hand more firmly.

"I think it just means you need to reconsider the effect of what you're doing, my love." Despite himself, Rethi felt himself melt a little on the inside, regardless of his storming emotions. He knew the significance of those words to Alena, and when she used them, she really meant it.

"How? I–" Rethi scrunched his brows in consternation, ruffling his own hair frustratedly, "I don't understand what I'm doing."

"Maybe you're not meant to." She said softly into his ear, leaning forwards and kissing him gently on the high bone of his cheek, "Maximilian is hard to understand at the best of times, even when he's being entirely honest with you. He's so different from us, so alien to our worlds. You can see how it hurts him whenever he remembers that." Rethi listened to his girlfriend, the very same girl he'd first found friendship with after he had become a beggar. He could still remember when she first stood in front of him, her body language nervous, but quickly attaching herself to him.

He had found their relationship to be like a close sibling relationship at first, sometimes they would switch who was the older sibling, despite Alena being somewhere around a year older than he was. It was time he'd found as a blissful retreat from the depression of his mother and their lacking financial status. Many times, Alena had brought him bread to feed his mother, though they had never spoken a word of the charity.

"I think," Alena continued quietly, "that Maximilian wants to show you that you're more than a warrior."

"But that's what I am!" Rethi said, almost reflexively, a flash of anger worming its way into his mind. It was something so integral to his psyche now, to his very self-image. He was a Divine Warrior, devout to his master and the nameless God of the Sun who had once created Hindle, the Divine Weapon that sat within his cloak, waiting patiently to be used.

"And you are exceptional at it, Rethi. Otherwise, Mayer wouldn't have even bothered to train you, let alone have you inherit his Divine Weapon." She said placatingly, not even flinching at the outburst, "You are so powerful now. You can fight toe to toe with Maximilian, something he clearly delights in. But, if the damned man has taught me anything, it's that I'm more than I think I am and I think you are too."

"More than I think I am?" Rethi repeated, making Alena nod solemnly.

"You're more than Divine Warrior, Rethi. You're my boyfriend. You're the successor of Mayer. The closest friend and confidant of a young mortal God. The sweetest, most caring man I know." She paused to smile sleepily at him, making warm, jittery emotions flood into his chest, "You're more than just a blade for Maximilian to send to war. I'm sorry that I ever thought that was the truth."

They spent some time together in the chill of the morning, the heat of their bodies more than enough to keep them warm as they embraced each other, their skin warming against one another.

After a while, Rethi left his girlfriend's embrace, confidently meeting the challenge of the day, donning the metal mask and his traveller's clothing.

Midday left the Skinned Lizard through the window, this time Hindle came with him, strapped to his lower back and humming with the excitement of the slowly brightening sky.


A/N: Thank you to my 5-dollar Patrons; Bisque, Christian P., Kristof D., and Thaldor! A massive thanks to my 10-dollar Patrons; TheBreaker, Benjamin V.E., Puppet424, and Dyson C.! A gargantuan thanks to my 20-dollar Patrons; Marisa E. and Thomas H.!

If you want to support me, and receive up to 90 total chapters in advance, check out my Patreon!

 

[Sarius]

Chapter 74: Candid Opinion

The days burned like oil in a lantern, ebbing away as the energy the light needed to survive was slowly depleted.

Valeri, however, was excited. The first days of training were gruelling, frustrating, rage-inducing, and anything in-between those expressions. They had been beyond difficult for Valeri to accomplish, especially with the distinct lack of the feeling of progress. She didn't feel any stronger, or any more capable than she had the days prior.

A few times she'd had thought to quit, to just not turn up one day. She had felt like she'd been snubbed by Maximilian, the man that had enchanted her so thoroughly in the course of a few hours, but every time she thought back to that oath she'd made to herself, in the image of Uaele.

The training was so demanding, both physically and emotionally, that thoughts of quitting were a constant thought. But when she thought back to the oath, the genuine emotions she'd found herself laden with that night, the woman who'd tended to her wounds just as she had her sons in decades past, she always found that renewed power to continue forwards.

In fact, it was almost easy. There was nothing easy about learning or training from Midday, the man being a harsher taskmaster than even her father, but the decision to continue onwards got easier and easier, even as her mind and body failed to continue.

"Good." Midday's distinctive voice cut through her thoughts as she completed the last of his stretching exercises, ones she'd been taught on the second day when her muscles had been sorest. Valeri hated that she felt a spark of pride at the affirmation, the simple word being all she'd ever gotten when she'd performed to Midday's arbitrary standard.

"Stand." Midday commanded brusquely, and Valeri promptly did so, "We're going to learn something new today, both of us." The short 'man' looked at her piercingly, seeking her response.

"What are we learning?" She asked hesitantly. Valeri had come to terms with the fact that Midday was probably younger than her over the past days, his voice being so immature sounding at points that it was hard to deny. Though she didn't say so, or let it change the way she looked at him.

"You're going to learn to wield something other than the thin hunk of junk you brought last time." Midday eyed her as the conflicted expression bubble to the surface of her face. Valeri loved using the rapier, it had been one of the only physical releases she'd had since childhood, not including dancing, which was more of a chore for the woman.

Midday turned his travellers' cloak that he'd laid on the ground and lifted it, pulling an exceptionally large sword from underneath. The entire cloak shifted as he pulled the oversized sword from underneath it, its full length only barely able to be hidden by the heavy cloak.

The blade was long and slightly wider than what she'd seen warriors carry. Its entire length was actually the majority of both Midday's and her own height, though not overly large like she'd seen in depictions of legendary warriors.

However, the blade's length wasn't really the interesting part, but just how wide it was. Valeri was sure that the weight of it was considerable, though Midday made it look like a twig he'd picked up from the ground on a whim.

"I picked this up from someone I trust," Midday thought for a second, "or a friend of someone I trust. Regardless, this is a blade called a claymore, although slightly edited to more benefit your unique situation." Midday walked over close, flipping the blade so that he was holding it backhand, the long and slender handle extended towards her. Valeri looked from him and back to the blade, only taking its handle after a few seconds of hesitation.

As soon as Midday let go of the blade, it felt as if the object had gained three times its weight. While the blade wasn't overly long, it was heavy, it almost felt like it should be longer rather than wider as it was.

Even as the weight of the blade settled in her hands, she found that she could hold it comfortably, enough that it wasn't going to significantly impede her if she tried to swing it. She took her first swing of the blade, and she found that her judgement was correct, though immediately she'd have to throw out almost everything she'd learned for wielding a rapier.

"Seems like you can handle it just fine, then." Midday said, unsurprised.

"How heavy is it?" She asked curiously, swinging it a few more times as she tested a few hastily put together stances she half recalled from lessons and books. Midday gave her an amused look, eyebrow raised.

"Can you wield it or not?" She growled at the challenge, making the man laugh harshly—something he'd been doing more of in recent days.

"Better than you could!" She said hot-headedly, immediately regretting the words as soon as they left her mouth.

"Better than me?" Midday said, a light glow of gold swirling in his bright green eyes. "Put your money where your mouth is then. Show me what you've got." He stepped in front of her menacingly, crossing his sun-kissed arms in front of his chest. From this close Valeri could see the muscle definition on the man, highly trained muscles writhing underneath his shirt and skin with every movement.

Valeri had made a challenge, and Midday wouldn't let her back out of it. A constant theme in their days. The woman grimaced as she nodded, getting herself into a long ready stance and preparing the blade, holding it vertical to her body where the blade towered up past her cheek and above her head.

And without warning, it was on. She desperately tried to swing the heavy blade as fast as she could, but as soon as she jumped into motion, the stance crumbled underneath her inexperience with a blade easily ten times the weight of the rapier.

Midday watched the blade move through the air, almost like you'd watch a snail move across the leaf of a plant, mockingly letting the blade near to his neck and only then bursting into motion, his fist crashing into the flat of the approaching blade and ripping it from Valeri's hands, launching it into the air magnificently. Midday catching the heavy thing with one hand on the way down was only insult to injury.

"Disappointing." He said in the usual tone. Valeri wanted to go and find a sufficiently sized rock to go bang her head against, but Midday didn't give her the chance. With a woosh, the blade was sitting just millimetres from her neck, her throat bobbing with an uncontrollable gulp.

"However, I'm cheating. This blade is too light for me, and will be too light for you very soon, thus the lack of accoutrements." He pulled the blade from her neck and looked into the distance pensively for a moment, then another. She turned to look across the seemingly empty plains and found nothing, but when she turned back to face Midday, he was smiling underneath his metal mask.

"What are you even smiling at?" She asked, bewildered by the strange actions, but Midday just waved a hand at her dismissively.

"Oh nothing, just a ghost in the wind." He turned back to her fully, his eyes flashing predatorily, "Time to get back to training, you."

---​

Valeri stumbled home without use of a horse, a punishment for the loss of a bet she'd made in a rage over something stupid on the second or third day. Without the rage powering her idiocy, Valeri regretted everything. Thankfully, she'd slowly stopped making the rash decisions, despite her outburst only hours earlier.

The one good thing about returning home on foot was that she had some time to think, in between her training and sleeping, or doing some other necessary task. It let her think on all sorts of topics, but still mostly consisting of Midday, Maximilian, and training.

Today was a little different though. In that morning she'd found a letter from one of her closer socialite friends, contacting her after she'd had Yeram reject any events for the past days. The letter wasn't anything special, but when it came to sending a letter, there was a whole lot of subtext that could be jammed into the mere act of sending one, let alone what existed between the lines on the parchment itself.

The letter was a simple check in, the contents of which was fairly sparse and lacking any interesting information at all, as was normal for a probing message like this. The message was less about what was in it, and more about the reason it was sent in the first place.

Valeri hadn't been to any social events for an entire week, not even doing simple things to maintain presence like going to a restaurant, or even somewhere like the Brightspark like she was before. This wasn't exactly usual, but it couldn't be called outlandish by any means. But the circumstances of her departure from the Brightspark almost two weeks ago had certainly circulated by this point. It was too juicy a piece of gossip to pass up.

Socially, she was making a grievous mistake by not going to reaffirm her presence within her circles. The particular 'friend' who had sent the letter was the first to reach out and was searching for her weakness. They had been gunning for her position within the social hierarchy for months at this point, and Valeri was about ready to slap the girl for it before Maximilian showed up and upended her daily life.

In short, Valeri was committing social suicide, and was haemorrhaging political power by the minute, but couldn't bring herself to truly care. She had never really cared about all that, she was simply good at it.

Valeri arrived home, giving Uaele a quick greeting as she opened the service door to let her in, and then declining any need for treatment, having been granted a surprising lack of wounds during training. Valeri passed down the hallway, turning corners and taking shortcuts within the labyrinthian tunnels of the service passages she'd barely known even a week ago.

Before long, she'd found herself walking from a slightly obscured door and into a long marble hallway that was less than a thirty second walk from her room. She set her sights down the hallway, only to be caught off guard by a slightly greying man in a tightly tailored butler's attire, shocking her enough that she needed to close her eyes to recalibrate for a moment.

"Good evening, Miss Ephars." The humble voice intoned tacitly.

"Courts, Yeram!" She said, surprised enough to swear so grandly, "What's with you and appearing out of nowhere?" While the man made no overt facial expressions, as was his professionalism, she'd swear that the sides of his lips turned upwards at her distress.

"You merely do not look hard enough. I was standing here the entire time, Miss." She glared at the man in his deceivingly dull looking brown eyes.

"Well, if you're spooking me in the dark of night, you better have something interesting to tell me!" She declared, crossing her arms with an air of haughtiness, most of which was an act of self-amusement. Though, when Valeri turned her eyes back to the pale-skinned, middle-aged butler, she saw a more serious face than she'd expected.

"I believe, Miss, that you should discontinue your training with this Midday character." Valeri recoiled from the words. He'd never been so forwards with his opinion before, not so much as to offer an actual opinion. Yeram had always restricted himself to casual advice or, on the rare occasion, a light warning. Much of which had been advice she'd either followed or regretted ignoring.

Yet never something prefaced with 'I believe'.

"Why?" She asked simply, watching the man's face attentively. His expression was stone cold, a constant frustration of hers throughout her youth to now.

"I believe that Maximilian you met, and this Midday character who is training you, have ulterior motives. Potentially disastrous ones for yourself, your family, and possibly Crossroads as a whole." Valeri's eyes narrowed at the vague answer she'd been given.

"Of course, they have ulterior motives, Yeram." She said coolly, her tone synchronising in seriousness with her attendant's, "The question is what those motives are." The attendant was silent for a long while, merely reciprocating the gaze that they were locked in. After a time, Yeram seemed to decide something, his eyes warming slightly.

"I have been collecting information on Maximilian Avenforth, past the original stopping point you gave me." She clenched her jaw slightly. He was admitting that he had been going behind her back, directly betraying orders, though she didn't say a word.

"While you have been extricated from the social circles during your training, this Maximilian has been busy. Both in the high districts and the… less savoury circles. I believe he is taking advantage of the power vacuum that you have created by going no contact and using the notoriety of being the last to truly talk to you."

"And how is he using that power," she said, her mind brining the question past her lips on instinct, "because right at this moment, I'm not sure that I entirely care unless he's doing something completely uncouth." She spat the words with a little more vigour than she would have if she'd been entirely clear headed, but the slight betrayal of Yeram's had been enough to push a little bit of heat into the words. Yeram didn't speak for a moment, bowing his head deeply in a statuesque apology.

"I believe that he is trying to contact a Shadow Walker, Lady Ephars."


A/N: Thank you to my 5-dollar Patrons; Bisque, Christian P., Kristof D., and Thaldor! A massive thanks to my 10-dollar Patrons; TheBreaker, Benjamin V.E., Puppet424, Alexandru T., and Dyson C.! An enormous thanks for my 15-dollar Patron; Jokarun! A gargantuan thanks to my 20-dollar Patrons; Marisa E., Kreiverin, and Thomas H.!

If you want to support me, and receive up to 90 total chapters in advance, check out my Patreon!

 

[Sarius]

Chapter 75: Web

Navigating a social web was an intriguing task, I'd come to find.

To get where you want to be in it, you have to travel what feels like an extravagant distance through connection to connection, hopping from conversation, to friend group, to business partner, to family member, and so on. It might not give me the immediacy that I'd like for my actions, being a waiting game in many senses, but you uncovered many little tidbits of information along the way that I found almost endlessly interesting.

Most of my time during the past two weeks, since the whole fiasco with Valeri, I'd been spending my time trapezing through social circles like nothing else. The ease of access I'd been granted as soon as Valeri had even done so much as talk to me, along with the drama of her disappearance, was almost astounding.

Sure, I wasn't so naïve that I thought it would remain this way. I was the shiny new toy on the market, and so I was the one that every rich woman and their dog wanted to invite to one social gathering or another.

But playing along was my specialty.

They weren't looking for a well-mannered, prim-and-proper type, they were looking for the chaotic element that I represented on the day I walked into the Brightspark and effectively notified everyone of my existence.

This meant that there were many reasons someone might invite me to their little get-togethers. One was that they were also a chaotic element within the social strata of the obscenely wealthy and were fostering a little group dedicated to the cause. Another was the type who were inviting me to try and pin the tail on the donkey, as such. Who was I? What did I want? What could they get from me? One more after that was those who simply wanted me to walk into their social gathering and change everything, add a calculated piece of chaos to shake the foundation a little.

All of these types were interesting, to some degree. My favourite so far had been a social event run by one of the first category.

Lucae Milna was a remarkably interesting man, a bit of an enigma when it came to the wider circles of the political and wealthy elite, but also part pariah. I'd been invited to his exclusive estate outside the bounds of Crossroads, hidden away ever so slightly from the direct view of the gated community of the uber rich. That was either by Lucae's design, or by his father's, which really didn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

The point was, Lucae was just about as rebellious as you could get with the kind of money he had. Think eternal orgy, friends of the lower class, lovers of the lower class, many, many lovers, so on and so forth. Inviting me out to his little estate was almost out of character to the man, who wore an eclectic mismatch of brightly coloured clothes which were placed to create the largest, garish mess he could possibly create.

His general dress and mannerisms reminded me distinctly of drag queens from Earth, with all their pomp and vitality. Though the man was far too rebelliously spirited to bother imitating the female sex, perfectly content with his mind bending 'masculine' clothing, if you could even call it that at this point.

When he had mentioned why he had invited me to his hidden away estate, it was as if the universe suddenly made sense. Oscar. Oh yes, the little tailor who had done such a good job on my suit, and now with my lovely looking purple tie, was apparently excellent 'friends' with Lucae. Which was short for sharing a bed at any chance they got.

In the sort of party that Lucae ran, I was almost entirely out of place. It was filled to the brim with the oddities and interests of society, even a fair amount of those from other races such as Reptilia, the purple skinned race I don't know the name of, and even the towering forms of the giant-like race I'd spied on the first day in the Skinned Lizard.

Thankfully, everyone was relatively respectful of my strict barrier on sexuality for the night, which had considerably confused quite a few men that had approached to proposition me for all sorts of things. I honestly felt bad about the whole thing, oddly, as there were more than one group having as close to sex as you could have without Lucae throwing you into the 'red room'.

Instead of simply pushing the men away and make selective conversation like I normally would, I realised that particular tactic would leave me all on my lonesome for the night in such an overtly affectionate and sexually charged environment. If I let word get out in the party that I wasn't interested, it was unlikely that anyone would bother to approach me at all.

So in a flash of social brilliance, I devised another reason that one might want to interact with me, other than the promise of sex, as flattering as it might be. That reason was a dance.

There was a dancefloor that was being used more as simply a place to stand, the musicians playing music that just meshed with the mood of the party rather than anything you'd classically dance to. It just so happened that the type of music that meshed with the atmosphere bored the musicians to tears, itching to play something more challenging for a crowd.

With barely a few words, I convinced them to do just that, and after finding Lucae and propositioning him with a dance, I led the stunned man to the dancefloor.

Prior to my few weeks of traversing social circles, I had been almost afraid of dancing. It was definitely a holdover from my time on Earth, the idea of dancing being the most mortifying possible concept and an excellent way to showcase your two left feet. Yet, I'd quickly come to realise that I was dumb.

The Sharah was anything you wanted it to be. It was a reflection of life and movement itself, and movement was as multifaceted as your imagination was. That first dance with Lucae had been extraordinary.

It helped that the other man had clearly learnt to dance at some point, though he was used to being the lead, and had tried to commandeer my movements at the beginning. I didn't let that last long, fixing him with a sultry smile, seductive in a way that bordered a sexual innuendo, but mostly just told to give into my own lead.

After the man relinquished his hold on that quiet clamour of control, the subsequent movements flowed across the dancefloor, the Sharah begging in my bones to be let loose past even the confines of the relatively large space. I could feel the movements vibrate the air around us, and I knew that Lucae could as well, each step I guided him through gave him a small pang of, 'oh, I understand'.

Over the course of the dance, it had changed from something almost sexually suggestive on Lucae's part, to a pure pleasure of movement and athleticism—something I'm not sure that Lucae had ever specifically delighted in. When the musicians had finally completed their heated rendition of some famous piece I'd heard at a few other parties, I stopped the dance and pulled away from the man, bowing at my waist formally.

"That was…" he had begun, standing in silence for a few moments more as he panted with exertion, "different." I could remember laughing at the word. so packed full of indescribable emotion, only able to be expressed by a warm hug from the party's organiser, followed by a chaste kiss on my cheek. After that, it was an absolute blur of dance after dance.

Some were battles between me and another who had clearly learnt dancing at a high level, some others were simply a hope to be taken on a trip of a lifetime. It was a surprisingly deep action, stemming from something deep inside me and also meshing so completely with my divinity, of the Hearth itself.

Each dance was interspersed with conversation, from business to deeply personal. It was surprising how much I learned after that; each conversation painting pictures of the social dynamics that surrounded Crossroads' elite.

I talked with Lucae candidly about his father's business, and how he felt as if he was trapped by the intense amount of wealth and the knowledge that it came from slave trade, and possibly worse. He told me of his fears, that he'd one day get too curious and begin looking at the real ledgers that sat in his father's hidden safe, and what he'd find in them when he did.

I talked to a lovely woman, Heri Molts, the estranged daughter of one of the more powerful Officials in Crossroads. Why she ran from her mother's iron grip and how her dive into depression and debauchery had begun with the understanding of what her mother does, or what she ignores to line her own pockets.

I talked with the man who had been the best dancer of the night, Emery Iskan, and the fears he held in his heart about the man he spent his nights with. The fears that one day he'd be thrown away, just like he had countless times before, and be traded for someone who could never say no, or be forced to say yes because of the power the other man held over his head.

I talked with men and woman that lived on the edges of the gangs, the only reason they aren't persecuted and oppressed by them was that they allied with them, to protect themselves originally. But then came the drugs and alcohol, the money that would feed their family for days in a single night's work.

Here is where I found the broken and disenfranchised. An integral piece in the puzzle I was trying to create in my mind.

I had those of the Skinned Lizard and the Gek woman, Lauka, to help me find my way in the world of the hidden and invisible. I had Valeri, Lucae, and the rest of who I'd met that night to help me find my way in the glaring lights that casted the darkest shadows.

It wasn't much of a beginning, lacking contacts and understanding amongst far too many groups to possibly call myself knowledgeable, but it was something. Yet, there was a large piece of the puzzle missing in my brain, something that I wanted to find and slot it in within everything else I had to work with.

"Lucae," I had said to the man, whispering into his ear as the early morning began to spill through the windows, pulling his sharp attention with my tone, "I would like to speak with you, privately."

The man, as frivolous and belligerent as he might seem, was as sharp as a tack. He quickly led me through the many corridors of his estate, shaking himself of the effects of weariness and whatever recreation he may have been partaking in.

He had ushered me into a large sitting room, which was clearly sparse and relatively unused, but across a low table sat two highbacked chairs that looked exorbitantly comfortable. We quickly sat, only confirming their comfort, and he had stared at me questioningly. I had taken my time in answering, settling into the seat, crossing my legs and finally steepling my fingers on my thigh.

"I'm sorry I have to ask you this question, Lucae." I smiled apologetically, "But I want to know what you know about the Shadow Walkers." The flamboyantly dressed man lost any and all humour in his disposition, showing a raw and serious side to Lucae that you'd only know existed if you'd seen it or were an empath capable of feeling the emotions of others. He ran his hand over his mouth, quickly smoothing out the smattering of eclectically styled facial hair that he had almost continuously twirled into different positions throughout the night.

"Maximilian, dear." The man's voice had almost been more of a sigh, "I really wish you hadn't asked that of me." The words might've been worrying if I couldn't see just how taboo the topic was to Lucae. There were a few minutes of the man building enough internal strength to speak, and when he did, they were shaky and full of conflict. "There are a few of them, and they operate within the Brauhm Empire, usually."

"How many?" I had asked, but the man grimaced unsurely.

"Five? At least the ones that have worked here. I can't be sure. All the information I have is from my father's ledger, from the last time I took a look at it." The last time being when Lucae was a child.

"So, they're assassins." I stated easily, and Lucae nodded with a dark expression on his angular features.

"They are masters of it, better than anyone in Crossroads. My father might be powerful financially, but even he can't sway them with all of his wealth. They are a spectre that sits over the heads of the rich and powerful in Crossroads, and even in Brauhm, readying a blade over their necks for the moment that someone pays them enough to kill their target." The man had looked me dead in the eyes after that, the clear hazel disks holding a powerful plea, something I'm almost certain was a very unusual expression on the normally carefree man's face.

"We may not be friends, having barely known one another long enough to say we're acquainted, but please don't chase shadows. They might contain something you aren't prepared for, and I'd hate to see your corpse become gossip for the stone hearted socialites."

How many times had someone worried about me now? A few times at least. They tried to protect me from some unknowable enemy, not understanding that they were exactly what I was seeking out, that the danger was nothing to me. I remember laughing at the man gently, standing to sit on the low table right in front of him and placing my hand on his arm softly.

"I'll be quite alright, Lucae. Don't you worry about me." The small flash of a fire's light in my eyes was all it took for the expression of dawning realisation appear on Lucae's face, though I had already begun my exit before I had been able to see it bloom fully, leaving the man forever on the edge of understanding without true confirmation.

That night had led to many more before I'd found what I was truly looking for. Before I found the man I was currently standing across from with a warm smile, despite the ugly expression on his face and his friend that stood at his side, ready to draw his blade at a moment's notice.

"What do you want, Mister Maximilian Avenforth?"


A/N: Thank you to my 5-dollar Patron; Thaldor! A massive thanks to my 10-dollar Patrons; TheBreaker, Puppet424, and Dyson C.! An enormous thanks to my 15-dollar Patron; Jokarun! A gargantuan thanks to my 20-dollar Patrons; Kreiverin!

If you want to support me, and receive up to 90 total chapters in advance, check out my Patreon!

 

[Sarius]

Chapter 76: Harsh Shadows

I gave the man standing across from me a once over, keeping a mask of pleasantry up the whole time. He was a fairly stylish man, wearing a slightly different, more complicated outfit than most in Crossroads bothered with. Consisting of lots of reds and golds, the robes mixed with more regular formal clothing created a distinctly upper class but slightly foreign effect, something I'm sure he capitalised on to great effect.

"Well now, no need for the hostility." I said relaxedly, holding up my hands in mock surrender. The lead man squinted his brown eyes suspiciously at me while running a hand through his slightly curly golden locks, far brighter than Rethi's own sandy blonde.

"Oh, I think I do need the hostility, Avenforth." He spat with some small amount of anger, "You might be able to food the rich idiots into accepting your little tirade through the social circles, but you can't fool me so easily."

"Tirade?" I asked placidly, moving a step towards the other man. However, before I could move forward another step, the man two his left rattled the sword that sat at his side warningly.

I turned my eyes towards the other man, finding him wearing something more akin to my own suit rather than the far more elaborate layers of robes that his friend wore. It was formal military in nature, of course, though of what particular military or policing force the particular uniform belonged to was lost on me. Though in some small places there was little insignias of a blazing sun, only adding to the veracity of the information I'd received.

"Yes, your tirade." The golden-haired man said scornfully, "I was there the night you appeared from nowhere, whisking Valeri Ephars away with barely a few minutes of chatting. You have no background to speak of, and no peerage to fall back on. You are nothing more than an imposter." I raised an eyebrow amusedly, all my other features pulling into a humorous smile.

"And when have I claimed that I was anything more than just that, Illias Traniel?" I turned from the incensed expression of that man and looked deeper into his partner's.

He wasn't a beautiful man like the man beside him, but his physique, posture, and even his expression was clearly born through training and hardship. The man's slightly darker skin was still pale in comparison to Valeri's own astoundingly dark skin, but its natural hue was likely not all that different than the pale man who served as his commander.

"You claimed that you were more than that when you imposed on the grounds of the Brightspark!"

"If you're foolish enough to believe that everyone that rests within the Brightspark is exactly who they say they are, then sure." I retorted nigh instantly, not even looking at Illias, more interested in his stoic friend. There was a small gasp of offense, but I waved the retort he was cooking up away, "Honestly, Illias, I could care less about your petty ego. I'm here, in this shitty little room, because you accepted my request to meet and set this as your desired location."

I gestured around us at what amounted to an unused cellar underneath a foreclosed-on bar in the north-west quarter. It was musky and dark, the only furniture being a decently sized wooden table and a slew of chairs surrounding it.

"So, either you love exploring the grimiest places in the city, for which I'd recommend the latrines, or you have information that you wouldn't mind leaving your hands if something of an equal weight is placed within." The other man almost growled with irritation, but eventually flipped the side of his cloak and sat in a chair around the table, clearly expecting me to take the opposite side, which I did.

His military friend didn't sit, standing by his side with a somewhat wary gaze, hand never quite leaving the short sword he held at his side.

"Fine, what do you want to know?" The man said as he leaned back in his chair, probably being as impolite as possible.

"What's your tie to the Brauhm Empire?" Illias looked at me drolly.

"And why would I tell you?" I returned the droll look.

"Because your relative status would tell me how much you might know about the given topic, or if you'll end up with more information by my simply explaining it. Information security, you see." Illias scoffed, rolling his eyes dramatically.

"Sixth son of Rayfar Traniel, head chair of the Bel-Far Merchant Conglomerate," I gave the man a look and the continued on begrudgingly, "here to establish political ties and do some basic cost benefit before Bel-Far considers investing." I raised an eyebrow again.

"Considers investing?" I laughed lightly, "That's pretty rich coming from the representative for one of the strongest mercantile powers behind legitimising the slave trade between Brauhm and Vahla." Both Illias and his military subordinate bristled.

"The Bel-Far Conglomerate do not–"

"Do not bullshit me, Illias." I let the relatively amiable gaze dry up and become a scathing glare, apparently intense enough that the military man shifted subtly into a defending stance. "The Bel-Far Conglomerate pump massive amounts of money through Crossroads to keep that trade alive, even as the incompetent 'nobility' in Vahla risk an uprising to keep their pockets lined."

As I looked into the face of the slightly stricken man across from me, I realised just how angry I was. The talk of slavery and injustice had been so far off not too long ago, but now one of the perpetuators, one of the many fingers of a morally bankrupt, man-made eldritch horror sat right in front of me daring to assume an innocent guise.

"You." I said, turning towards the military man who was shocked to even be addressed, though it didn't show on his face. "Who are you?" I intentionally tapered off the heat in my voice, despite the anger I had for his superior.

"Garrian, sir." He said warily, though a strictly respectful tone was used. Probably something beat into him in his service.

"Your family name? Title?" I asked, though I already knew the answer. I had done at least some research on the Brauhm Empire and their ways, including how they shamed people and stripped any of rights away.

"I have been disinherited by the Emperor and Brauhm's will." He said stonily, though I could feel the hurt as I forced him to say the words. I almost felt bad for the man if I wasn't about to use it to defend him in my next sentence.

"Disinherited, hm?" I turned to Illias and fixed him with a burning gaze, "And how, exactly, did he come to work under your employ?" Illias screwed up his nose at me with an imperious look.

"I acquired him from Military prison and as a part of his sentence, he works under my employ." The vile man was about to continue onwards, his filthy mouth about to spout more casual evil, but I'd heard enough.

"For no money, with no standards of living, with a contract that can be extended in perpetuity on a technicality, with absolutely no control over what they'll be doing, who they'll be working with, or what they are ordered to do." I stopped briefly, the string of cold words leaking from me in smooth sequence, "Does that sound familiar to you, Illias Traniel?"

I placed each and every word with a precise measure, impacting against both of the men's emotional states and psyches. Yet even when Illias' mouth opened, presumably to defend himself or the company, or even the Empire his company hides behind, I switched tactics entirely. With a newfound amiable grin, I cut in before the man.

"But, again, that's hardly what I'm here for. Everything in its due time, yes?" The almost happy words seemed to terrify the man more than he'd like to let on, even his compatriot was sufficiently perturbed despite his stoic façade. While I might not exactly be capitalising on my combat prowess just yet, there was certainly something to be said for a dangerous social presence as well.

"What are you really here for, then?" Illias asked, trying to reinsert his own presence and gain a foothold, but he only managed to sound weak and scared, even to his subordinate.

"Well," I began as if I was beginning a fairy tale, "one night, a few nights ago now, I came across some very interesting information about a little group of assassins, I believe." Illias immediately went stock still, a little colour draining from his face.

"I didn't learn all that much about them, just the name they go by and a few little tidbits about just who they'd be involved with." I let my overly cheery, but convincingly genuine gaze bore into the other man, throwing him off his own game even further.

"I don't know–" I cut him off again as if he'd never spoken in the first place.

"You see, I have a sneaking suspicion that there are a good few people outside of Crossroads orchestrating some… advantageous situations to control its internal political climate. Quite the scandal if true, but let's be honest, it's pretty stock standard when it comes to combating political insurrection in very profitable investments, isn't that right Illias?" The man in question was losing control over his mask completely now. He'd been sent here to cut his teeth on an actually important endeavour, one that was important enough to use the services of a covert group of possible shifter assassins.

However, the only reason why Illias Traniel was here, rather than any other competent politician or merchant was because of nepotism. He might be a half decent power in his own element, building his own little social web of the elite in Crossroads, but faced up against me who had all the social power of a sledgehammer, he floundered as the conversation was no longer governed by the strict social 'rules' of courts and upper-class idiocy.

"So, I will make this nice and clear for you, Illias." I stated merrily, "Tell me about Shadow Walkers."

And so he did.

Thankfully, there were no glaring mistakes with my already presumed understanding of the Shadow Walkers. They are even 'officially' called as such. The Shadow Walkers are effectively Church sponsored assassins, though they aren't really beholden to the Church either. They are implicitly tied to the Brauhm Empire and are taught to 'walk in the Shadow of Brauhm's Light', which seems a little against the point. Because of just how intertwined the Church of Daylight and the Brauhm Empire itself are, the Shadow Walkers quite literally double as a covert operative sect for the Empire itself, meddling in secular affairs on the regular.

So, when the Shadow Walkers went from being entirely under the thumb of the Daylight Church to quite a few very powerful and very devoted members splintering from the Church itself and establishing themselves as their own entity, things got messy fast.

Apparently they went a little too wild for a while there, assassinating the heads of multiple different extremely powerful households. Though soon enough they started to get the hang of their own political power, something they'd borrowed understanding of from the extremely politically conservative Church of Daylight, who'd play political chess with assassinations. Over the course of a few generations of household heads, the Shadow Walkers managed to prune the political environment to their liking and now they focus on growing the Brauhm Empire under the command of the Emperor that they managed to put into power in the first place.

While I had expected some of this, I didn't expect them to be so… controlling. I had expected a hire for cash band of shifting assassins, not a religious order of Brauhm nutcases that seek to destabilise and conquer the world. It didn't entirely make sense why they did jobs for hire, though I guess it might be a ploy to trick the lower-level powers in and out of Brauhm into thinking that they are just assassins who are fickle with their jobs. If true, they probably only take a job when it's politically advantageous to either them or the Brauhm Empire, or its a complete dummy job to spread the rumours.

Clever bit of politics there.

"Well," I began flippantly, staring at the gutted fish that was Illias Traniel, "I honestly thought you'd be more stupid than that, but I guess you can be a blithering idiot and still possess a few wits to work with."

"What's my payment, then?" The man asked, ignoring the insults as he ground his teeth together. He knew full well that he was in absolutely no place to ask for any payment at all.

"And why do you deserve payment, idiot?" I asked succinctly as I stood from my chair.

"Because I can be an inside man within the Bel-Far Conglomerate and the Brauhm Empire." He said instantly. Maybe he really wasn't an idiot. I could feel within his mind a surety that I was a wave to be ridden on, even if it meant he was going against the usual tide.

"And I should trust you?" I asked simply. He swallowed heavily and was about to speak before a very dark tone shattered the moment, the thunderous words echoing from Garrian's mouth.

"You wish to betray the Empire?"


A/N: Thank you to my 5-dollar Patron; Thaldor! A massive thanks to my 10-dollar Patrons; TheBreaker, Puppet424, and Dyson C.! An enormous thanks to my 15-dollar Patron; Jokarun! A gargantuan thanks to my 20-dollar Patrons; Kreiverin, Andrew P.!

If you want to support me, and receive up to 90 total chapters in advance, check out my Patreon!

 

[Sarius]

Chapter 77: Insurrection

Garrian pulled his superior up from the chair her was sitting in by his collar. The pompously dressed man, with no athleticism to speak of, only just managed to keep his footing when Garrian pushed against his chest.

Though the heavy kick to his gut sent him sprawling across the ground, rolling limply up against the filthy cellar's stone floors.

"Garrian–" The other man in the room, the one who had so easily twisted Illias' allegiances piped up to speak, but Garrian wouldn't have it. He turned a set of blazing eyes on the man, even Garrian himself was surprised at just how enraged he was.

"Shut up." Garrian's eyes connected with Maximilian's for a moment, and while he hardly seemed all that perturbed by the command, he sit back slightly honouring the command.

"Garrian, what are you doing?" The whelp of a man on the floor gasped, scrabbling backwards from Garrian's own much taller and much more muscled form.

"You want to betray the Empire, Traniel? After all you've done to me?" Illias recoiled on the ground, as if he were burnt by the burning words. Garrian looked down on Illias, watching as the beautiful robes and clothing were smeared with grime, the man's lily-white skin marred with an angry scrape on his chin, and his blonde hair thrown into disarray as dirt and other detritus had tangled themselves in it.

"Done to you?" The man asked back incredulously, though he wilted as he saw the explosion of rage on Garrian's face.

"Don't play a fool Illias, you bought me! You could have let me live my life in that damn cell, and in ten years I could leave, but you bought me, you bastard!"

"You were going to be bought anyways! Lucky it was me rather than–" The strike against Illias' face was so viscerally satisfying to Garrian. He'd had to follow this dreg of a human being, cutting apart far too many people for political convenience. He was a warrior of Daylight, not a mercenary. Or at least he used to be.

"Don't you dare." The words were cold, a different kind of anger filling Garrian as he found that his hand had wandered onto his sword's hilt as was pulling it out of its sheath.

"Maybe you shouldn't have committed your crimes then, Garrian!" Illias snarled, though the remark came off as weak. Garrian could feel any symbol of rage leaving his expression, instead filling it with a stone-cold heart.

"You have no idea what my 'crimes' were, do you? You know all the merits and the training, like a product description, but you still haven't bothered to even look into it have you?" The look of terror on the man's face as Garrian slowly revealed his metal almost seemed to leech power into Garrian's bones, goading him into lording over the man who'd done as much to him.

"Of course I did!" Illias said, his eyes fixed on the blade in Garrian's grip as he tried to press himself into the wall, "What am I supposed to do when the Church tells me that it's a matter of 'internal importance'?"

Garrian let the two words roll over his tongue idly as his mind delved into the deep and dark memories, the memory of a particularly cold night and an extended hand he'd rejected.

"A matter of internal importance." He repeated finally, cold eyes boring into the man in front of him, "To reject a Shadow Walker's training would be sufficient, don't you think?"

Illias' expression paled even further, going an ashy grey that you could only truly see on a man when they knew they were going to die.

"What? I–"

"You didn't know. Of course you didn't, because you're an imbecile and everyone thinks so." Garrian laughed harshly, his hands shaking with the want to plunge his sword into the man's chest, "Your father sent you out here because he thought you'd manage to get yourself assassinated if you stayed in the Empire, and you think the 'bandits' we encountered on the way to this cesspool were a coincidence? It was your brothers, you fool."

Each new word was a decisive drum against which Garrian beat, the noise echoing throughout the room as he bellowed into the man's face. The words that had been hanging over his heart for so long were finally vocalised.

"Good Gods, is he really that dull?" A new voice cut in, reminding Garrian that the room had another inhabitant with a start. Garrian turned his cold fury on the other man looking him over intently.

Maximilian Avenforth still sat just as he had not minutes before, totally undisturbed by the sight of a man about ready to slit another's throat. The man was dressed elegantly with clothing almost reminiscent of Garrian's own military garb, though far finer than what the military would give to any but the highest of ranking personnel. His slightly longer brown hair coincided with his similarly brown eyes, and the slight dusting of facial hair was directly dichotomous with the formality of his dress.

Maximilian raised an eyebrow amusedly at the enraged Garrian, "What? Is a man not allowed to interrupt a murder when he sees the beginning of one?"

The simple words almost shocked Garrian with their starkness. The man almost seemed entirely detached from the situation itself. It was then the Garrian realised that they were being played like an instrument.

"You." Garrian said, his words boiling with the heat of his anger at once again being used as a tool, just another pawn.

"Me." The man replied easily, but once again with little respect to the gravity of the situation around him. "You know that you can't kill him, right?" Garrian stopped, hand clenching around his sword's hilt more powerfully than it ever had before.

Of course, the flippant man was right. Killing Illias Traniel would be a disaster in the making. The news of his death would come fast, especially with how frequently he and the Bel-Far Conglomerate communicated. With confirmation of his death, the clear culprit would be his subordinate, and they would hardly care to investigate too hard, especially not when his death would come with so little political importance to the rest of the Conglomerate.

Garrian would be made an example of, and Illias' death would be a spectacle used to dissuade an uprising. Garrian wouldn't even be surprised if the cold and callous Rayfar Traniel would send a Shadow Walker just to slaughter him, to send another important political message to the world.

An eye for your life, a tooth for your family's.

That didn't mean that Garrian's hate wouldn't spend itself on trying to bore a hole through the flippant man's head, however.

"As soon as you jam a sword into his just, your life may as well be over, Garrian. You need a better solution." Garrian growled at the man deeply, the powerful muscles in his jaw bulging with intensity.

"And you're here to give me one?" Maximilian shrugged off the man's accusatory words, smiling casually at the seething man.

"I wasn't. In fact, I was only here for information about the Shadow Walkers. I could have cared less about Illias, aside from his inevitable involvement in what I have in the works. But now the plan has changed, if you want a part in it that is."

Garrian snorted derisively, teeth grinding, "You just want me to court death under another master."

"That isn't fair, Garrian." The other man's voice went flat, his eyes warning, "I'm not offering you slavery under another master, I'm offering you a part in a plan that might just earn you a little freedom from your bonds."

"And by doing so I'll be putting myself in more danger than just dying." Maximilian nodded, his hair swaying gently as his did so.

"Indeed you will." The man rose from his seat, showing off his almost impressive height, one that Garrian only just managed to rival within a few inches. The man didn't walk so close to Garrian for it to be a challenge, but as his tasteful leather shoes clicked across the filthy stone of the cellar's floor, Garrian found a strange intimidation in the man's form. He walked like a warrior, talked like a politician, dressed like his military superiors, and held a secret power, one that even Garrian could feel gently radiating off of him like warmth from a campfire.

"I'm sure that it will be one of the more dangerous endeavours you'll participate in throughout your life. If you stop with this, that is." Maximilian stood just a metre away from Garrian now, his brown eyes searching Garrian's own for something.

"On with it, then." Garrian said after a long moment of semi-lucid contemplation through the haze of anger and injustice. The man nodded, looking over to Illias who was still sprawled out on the floor and letting his gaze travel between the two that now inadvertently held his fate in their hands.

"Simply, you'll be my contact and Illias will be a puppet." Illias squawked with the start of an indignant tirade, but Garrian shut him up with a glare.

"And how, exactly, do you think I'll even be able to pull that off?"

"You're standing right next to the man however many hours of the day, you have all the dirty secrets you could get, you even seem to have an actual understanding of the politics around his family, at least one that's better than whatever he's got." Maximilian waved a hand dismissively to the man who now laid on the ground, covered in grime instead of on his little high horse.

"I said that I'd do what you want!" Illias managed to squeak, though the layer of cold sweat reappeared as soon as both Maximilian and Garrian turned to stare at him.

"And I don't trust you. I'd sooner trust a man who has somehow managed to restrain himself from killing you for Gods know how long." Maximilian ignored the drivel that Illias began to spout, turning back to Garrian.

"Other than that, I'll be backing you any way that I can. I'll hold on to any sensitive information, and if I can't get a hold of you, then it all somehow finds its way to the public eye. I don't have much of a framework set up just yet, but it won't take long, I assure you."

"And why should I trust you?" Garrian said pointedly, his face morphing into one confused between anger and dubiousness.

"Good question." Maximilian said easily, but shrugged, "No earth-shattering reason, really. Other than you actually managing to live a few days after this little incident. That is, unless the clown is satisfied with mutual suicide."

Garrian's mind began to whir furiously, trying to both find reasons to ally himself with the man, and also reasons not to do so. If he did, he'd be risking everything, but just having this conversation was damning enough so he was already in the thick of it. He could run away, but that had never ended well for any of the others that'd done so. The Conglomerate weren't kind to runaways, and they'd use their reach and their money to incentivise his 'return'.

The verdict was coming up clear, but even so, Garrian was hesitant. He might be angry, and have every inclination to be his damnable superior's handler, knowing the good that he could do with the sort of power and influence that Illias and his family name held, even within the Empire itself.

But what would that influence be used for?

"You're hesitant." The other man said calmly, reading into Garrian's expression explicitly, "You have every right to be. Your life as you know it is going to change so severely that you might just get swept up under the tide and never resurface. But I think that will be the same for many others, very soon." Garrian looked into the other man's eyes and found a small fleck of fire in them, enchantingly captivating in the way it moved within the great pools of his eyes.

"There are things peering over the horizon that will only get closer and closer until it's upon us. Between now and then, things have to change, and it begins with us." Maximilian Avenforth shifted forwards slightly, placing a warm and heavy hand on Gillian's shoulder, pulling in right next to his ear and whispering a little collection of words.

"It all begins with an unavoidable insurrection."

When Maximilian pulled back, Garrian managed to catch a single glimpse of his eyes as he did, glowing strongly with a power so definite that it found its own place within Garrian's memories for what would be forever.

The glow disappeared in a moment, leaving Garrian wondering if it had merely been a trick of the light, yet Maximilian smiled a knowing one as he caught Garrian's confused gaze.

Garrian sighed, wondering what thread of fate he'd pulled on to have his life fall down such an odd and mysterious path, but as he stood in front of what he could only assume was a truly blessed man, he found himself unable to resist from saying his next words.

"Let's do it, sir."


A/N: Thank you to my 5-dollar Patron; Thaldor! A massive thanks to my 10-dollar Patrons; TheBreaker, Puppet424, and Dyson C.! An enormous thanks to my 15-dollar Patron; Jokarun! A gargantuan thanks to my 20-dollar Patrons; Kreiverin, Andrew P.!

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[Sarius]

Chapter 78: A Rare Rest

The web was forming, clearer now than ever.

The conversation between Illias and I had taken an almost unforeseeable left turn, ending up being more about Garrian and I than the other, more influential man. I had secured myself a way to keep in contact with the man, with a simple messenger or a particular bar that would hold the word for him, and then I'd left with little fanfare.

An insurrection… it was certainly a step up from the minor stunts I'd pulled in Mayer's little road town.

The escalation wasn't free of anxiety, not in the slightest. It was terrifying, even if it was the most competent I'd ever felt in my entire life. I felt like I was a fish in water, the movements as easy as walking was for me now, yet the anxiety never left me now.

The reasoning was obvious, I'd jumped from a pond into a raging river, and I was trying desperately to continue swimming even if it were as natural as anything. Every moment that I thought of something new to add to my web of connections, I was hit with a moment of panic, followed by cold sweats and a sense of overwhelming dread.

Maybe My mind was only now coming around to the reality of the task I'd given myself. To save the worlds, Virsdis and Orisis alike, would be a massive undertaking, and it all started with me getting this right. Then me getting the next thing right, and the thing after that.

I swallowed against the anxiety pushing it down for a scant moment while I walked into the Skinned Lizard far past its regular operating hours. I'd barely been back to the little inn for the past few days, spending my time flitting from party to party, luxurious home to monolithic mansion. But now, I found myself in need of at least some rest.

The interior of the little inn was cosy, a gentle fire flickering in the fireplace and lending its warmth to the rest of the room. The rest of the lights, mostly oil lanterns, were left to slowly peter out in their soundless war against the encroaching darkness.

There was no one in the room, and no one even in the kitchen or backroom where Tek had first held his meeting with me and the others. It was quiet as could be. Yet I knew someone was here, a friendly presence that I soothed me simply by being nearby.

I grabbed a chair from one of the many tables, carrying it easily to right in front of the little fire, glittering in the darkness. I place the chair down backwards, and then sat facing the back of it, leaning on the solid wooden back of it.

"Hello there, brother." I called out gently. There was a little sputter of life from the fire, suddenly possessing a whole new warmth entirely. There was a warm chuckle from within the fire, radiating from it like its very own heat.

"Good evening brother." The God on the other side of that fire said. It was a different voice than last time, a warm and inclusive voice instead of the slightly reedier and bookish tone of the Last Hearth God I'd interacted with.

"Why do I have the pleasure?" There was another chuckle, with what could only be a wide smile accompanying it. I grinned in the eye of the fire as it flickered, waiting for the God's answer.

"Well, our complete lack of pertinent information since the Keeper's arrival was making us look bad, I'd say. I decided I was going to be the one to offer up a little of my own power to have a chat, touch base, all that good stuff." I rose an eyebrow to the luxuriant and endlessly warm tone of the God.

"Have you guys been having a hard time doing any research on the Champions?" The flame flickered back and forth for a moment, almost a gesture of denial.

"Nothing of the sort, I assure you. We've located ten or so Champions on Orisis, eleven if you count the one who got himself killed, but it has been slow going on Virsdis' own set of Champions. Maybe they are being more reclusive due to the political instability of most areas."

"So you know where a fifth of the Champions are; what about the others?" I asked wearily, a small pang of dread already overcoming my body.

"We have our leads, some scraps here and there. The ten are the ones we've nailed down completely, most of which are basically marauding murder machines at this point." The God paused to hum thoughtfully, "We have our eyes on a possible twenty others, though at least eight of those leads are questionable at best."

"Any leads on Virsdis?" The flame almost shrugged.

"One or two, one more promising than the other. The promising one will end up leading you north, though it seems like you'll be ending up there as some point in the near future, what with your new puppet socialite." I rolled my eyes, ignoring the pang of anxiety over the reminder that I had yet another task I needed to manage now.

"In the Brauhm Empire." I asked simply.

"Near it." Came the confirmation, though he didn't talk to specifics. I sighed, running a hand through my slightly too long brown hair, feeling against my scalp in consternation.

"We're sorry, you know?" The warm voice rang out again, slightly subdued this time. I scrunched my brows together, at the fireplace.

"Sorry for what?" I asked, though I think I already knew the answer.

"Putting the weight of two worlds on your shoulders." They replied softly, "We spent many years simply hoping that the Champions would never make a return, or that your world's God would pick another place to inflict them upon."

"But he didn't." I cut in, falling into silence for a mere moment.

"But he didn't. And that left us with very few choices. Remarkably few for just how powerful the Hearth Court has grown in the many, many years I've been kicking around."

"What were your choices? What lead you to empower a Champion, and unexceptional one at that?" There was a rumble of laughter from the fire, making the fire pop and crackle emphatically.

"There were other avenues. Maybe empowering one of the residents on Orisis would have been possible, though you underestimate just how hard it is to find a suitable candidate to bless, even a small blessing. Valeri, the blessed of Might your right hand is training, she's a good example of how hard finding someone to bless is. Tarania must've had a heck of a time finding her if she puts up with Valeri doing nothing to better herself." I grudgingly nodded at his point.

"But still, it's a wild move to make. The Hearth Court gave me effective Divinity. The real deal too."

"The real deal is a good way to put it. You're correct, it was a massive decision, one made in no small part due to our older brother's judgement." The other God pointedly avoided saying Gallar's name, likely still worried that invoking his name would draw far too much attention to our covert rendezvous, "Our older brother's word holds an immense amount of sway over our decisions. It was the Court's choice to simply petition the other Courts yet again, as we had done many times during the last War. He had instructed us to search for Mayer Renue, and in the process, we found you."

"And our older brother made that call as well?" The fire chuckled.

"That very day. I believe that it was the first ironclad decision that he has ever made, even the few brothers who have been around longer than I were shaken that he'd made such a determination. It's very unlike him to gamble."

"So it was just his determination? None of you believed in it?"

"No, we weren't quite convinced, not until we saw his conversation with you, and when we first felt your presence compared to his. The decision was unanimous and almost immediate, even if we were unhappy that it'd come to it." His words trailed off into a companionable silence. Though a hundred questions burned in my mind, one in particular forcing its way from between my lips.

"How'd you know?"

"We just did," he replied after a thoughtful hum, "it was as simple as that. You were one of us, and that was the way it was."

"Helpful." I said, a little sourness leaking into my voice, though the God just laughed like you would at a pouting child over something small.

"You underestimate what you are Maximilian. You seem to believe that much of your social prowess comes from the power given to you, forgetting that you were always this way, you just didn't quite understand it as such." I frowned bitterly at the fire, the words of encouragement not quite reaching me past the layer of doubt.

"It doesn't feel like it." I spoke.

"And neither do I feel like a true God. I never have and may never feel as such." The warm voice consoled, "Yet, I am, and I must be."

"But I have to somehow deal with everything down here, and I constantly feel like I'm floundering, just a few steps away from disaster." My bitterness leaked from my mouth without proper warning, though by the end of the sentence I couldn't find fault with those word. The flame in the fireplace grew silent, the only indication that anyone was still there to respond was the distinct feeling of divine, something incomprehensibly complex, but distinctive all the same.

"And there are many platitudes I could spout, but I'd hardly be a good bartender if I didn't have my own wisdom to deliver." The voice was starkly cheery, getting a wry chuckle out of me before it continued onwards, "You've been given the heaviest burden that I could possible think of. It's something so incomprehensibly heavy that I suspect it's not something you could reasonably process at once." The voice trailed off again before resuming a moment later.

"So don't. The far future is the concerns of the Fate Court for now, your own worries should be of the immediate questions. Of Rethi, Alena, and Valeri. Of Oscar, Lucae and Illias. Of Garrian, the Shadow Walkers, the Brauhm Empire. The Champions, for now, aren't relevant, and your first clash with one is something we're actively avoiding at the present. We wish to lead you towards a Champion who will be receptive to your petition, and that is our job to worry about.

"For now, all you must think about is to do what you can, and we will be there to guide once you need it."

There were no words spoken afterwards, the silent goodbye being conducted by our divine energies as they so briefly touched before the God left the little fire, leaving me alone in the slightly cooler room. I left the fire to slowly die over the course of the night, deciding that I would give myself a moment of reprieve from the never-ending treadmill of social advancement, something that I'd been capable of walking through with an ease that came both naturally and divinely to me.

I let myself sleep that night, in the room filled to the brim with all of our packs and supplies. I hadn't experienced sleep, or any significant amount of it, for many months now. Now that I could go entirely without sleep, I'd even begun to find the act of relinquishing your conscious to nothingness for hours unnerving.

Though that night, it was perfect. Within moments of me resting my head to the comfortable pillow, I was asleep.

I dreamed that night, an odd experience when I found my mind was untouched by the alluring agreeableness that a dream usually inflicted. Within it, I wandered in field, destroyed and razed like only a thorough bombing could replicate. It was far too reminiscent of old picture and videos of the wars that had occurred on Earth, the lengths of soul-destroying trenches filled with boys far too young to be allowed to witness the horrors.

Yet I stood in that field, beside me was my hammer, the Soul Weapon that had formed itself out of my soul itself.

I don't know what could possibly have lent it the shape it'd taken, or the properties that it expressed. It would likely be a mystery forevermore, but in here it made a certain sort of sense.

"A heavy burden creates an equally powerful resistance." I said in a strange fugue.

"Cannot the burden be so heavy that it's weight crushes what lies beneath?" I asked myself lightly.

"Yes, but such is the cost. What is crushed beneath will become the essence of the successor's power." I answered.

My hand grasped the hilt of the hammer and found it to be as heavy as ever. Though the weight was more familiar than it had been not too long ago when I'd taken Gallar's blessing, the divine seed now resting within my soul as a small sprout, a single leaf twitching with the promise of what it could soon be.

The weight was casual in my hands, though the monstrous weight of it quaked the earth as I swung it. What was more enormous than its weight, however, is my hammer's potential. The weight ever increased, as long as my own strength did in proportion.

As I thought of it as such, I felt the hammer grow in weight, rivalling my ever-increasing strength. When would it be that a single strike would shake the worlds when it hit? That it would be so powerful as to cause it to crack like an egg would.

I stared around myself, following the holes and trenches scarred into the earth and realised that they weren't that at all. They were movements, they were the Sharah in motion, the terrible destruction they can bring along with an impossible physique and weapon as my own.

There was a moment of horror before the dream was interrupted by the distinct sound of my room's door opening, waking me from the lucid experience, and launching me back into reality, casting an eye towards Rethi, who stood at the door with a metal mask covering his face.

"Uh, good morning?"

"Morning." I grumbled.


A/N: Thank you to my 5-dollar Patron; Thaldor! A massive thanks to my 10-dollar Patrons; TheBreaker, Puppet424, Kreiverin, and Dyson C.! An enormous thanks to my 15-dollar Patron; Jokarun! A gargantuan thanks to my 20-dollar Patron; Andrew P.!

If you want to support me, and receive up to 90 total chapters in advance, check out my Patreon!

 

[Sarius]

Chapter 79: Minder

Valeri had walked slowly this morning, allowing herself to rest her mind before she confronted the day with the new information she now has.

Maximilian was looking for the Shadow Walkers. The mere notion of that statement was almost incomprehensible to her. The Shadow Walkers were a living death sentence, arbiters of all that passed through their long shadows.

She didn't know how to feel, she couldn't help but feel the man would have his reasons, but she'd only known him for less than a few hours. She'd spent many times that with the man who called him master, Midday.

She had decided the day before, however, that she'd confront Midday. She'd ask what they were doing, what they were planning, and then make a determination from there.

Despite the slow walking, she arrived at their spot faster than she'd expected—her mind in a daze of thought and warping her perception of time itself. She was once again standing not fifty metres from the cloaked form of Midday, standing quite a few inches shorter than herself, though it gave her no comfort.

"Took your time." Midday's voice rang out across the field of relatively flat ground, though not flat enough that it wouldn't throw off your balance if you weren't being aware.

"Sorry." She said reflexively before cringing at herself, the plan of brining at least some momentum into the conversation had been quashed so easily. Regardless of the weak footing, she quickly continued into the beginning of her interrogation.

"Why are you training me?" Midday, who was getting ready to recite a list of exercises he'd have her perform, frowned at being interrupted.

"Do you not want to be trained?" He asked drolly, making Valeri almost scowl.

"You know that's not what I mean. Why are you training me? What's your goal?" He looked at her from within the mask, the piercing green lacking any golden power at current.

"Because I was ordered to."

"And you don't have any idea what Maximilian is doing right now?" She said quickly, digging into something that she hoped was soft earth. The man's eye went slightly harder, enough to tell Valeri that Midday was distinctly unhappy with that question.

"I know enough of what he is doing. If there is something he truly needs from me in the meantime, then I will be told." Valeri almost grinned, her socialite senses were tingling at the faint taste of some frustration in her trainer's voice.

"And looking for the Shadow Walkers isn't a big enough deal for you to be told?" She said, her words sharper than she'd ever used on the other man. She'd expected some sort of reaction, but when the man's shoulders eased ever so slightly from their tensed position, she was a little flabbergasted.

"Ah, I see." He said casually, bobbing his head from underneath his hood, "You've had someone keep an eye on what Master Max has been up to?" Although it wasn't the complete truth, she nodded regardless. No need to lessen your own power by saying that a subordinate did it regardless of your own orders.

"Then you seem to still have no conception of just who Master Maximilian is, even with you keeping an eye on him." Midday laughed coldly, though Valeri compensated by adding heat to her tone as she lashed back.

"Of course I have no idea! I've barely talked to the man, and yet here I am, being trained by one of his flunkies!" She growled at the man loudly, pulling herself just short of yelling.

"And you think you merit him spending his time on? Again, you seem to be underestimating my master." Midday took off his cloak, folding it precisely. It revealed a sight that Valeri had seen numerous times, and she'd always found herself grudgingly impressed by the man's physique. However, what had always broken up the look was a tattered sword that Midday seemed to always have strapped to his lower back, the decrepit handle peeking from his side for easy grabbing.

"Am I not worth spending time on? I'm the sole heir to the Ephars businesses and fortune and am a blessed of Might. Is that not enough?" Valeri said almost bitterly. Midday didn't snort derisively like she had half expected, instead he tilted his head to the side ever so slightly, his sandy blonde hair swaying as he did so.

"No." He said simply, filling her with even more indignant confusion, "All you are doing is showing how little you understand what my master's goals are. You'll need to be far more impressive to come close to being worth his time."

It wasn't that Midday had taken a harsh tone; it was that the tone was filled with an absolute surety. There was absolutely no doubt in Midday's tone, he spoke with such blatant honesty that it only baffled Valeri more. What could Maximilian's goals be for her to be nothing in the scope of it?

"What, is he trying to rule the worlds or something?" She snorted, failing to keep the slight offense out of her voice. Yet when she looked back to Midday, focusing back on his eyes, she found herself confronted by a terrifying understanding.

"If that is what it takes." Midday intoned heavily, and she could swear that the air vibrated with the words as he said them. Though, she couldn't help but ignore them, her mind coming to a conclusion she'd almost dreaded.

"Oh Gods, you're insane." She murmured, backing away a step almost hesitantly. But Midday stood absolutely still.

"Insane?" Midday said thoughtfully, "Maybe. The goal we seek is so far out of your wheelhouse that you couldn't possibly comprehend its magnitude. Yet my master told me that you were to be trained. To us, you are a piece of the puzzle that will eventually serve in the grander picture." Midday took a step forwards, uncrossing his powerful arms and using his right to reach behind his side and grab onto the hilt of the worn and tattered sword, one that looked like it had been nothing more than a showpiece sword when it was new.

Valeri, fearing that the man was going to legitimately attack her, reached towards her back and leaned the massive claymore out of the straps that bound it to her back. She positioned the blade ahead of her, even though she knew that the gesture was pointless. Midday was capable of overwhelming her even as she threw everything at him, with his bare hands no less.

"You are just one piece in a wider puzzle, and to be anything more than that would require far more dedication than even what you're showing now." Midday's tone was soft, almost as if he were mentally removed from his own physical actions, "Do you want to see what it would take to be more than what you are?"

The question shook Valeri as her eyes glanced across the man's form and to the battered sword he now casually held in his hands as if it were an extension of his body. She adjusted her stance minutely as her mind tried to filter through the patterns of attack he could take, desperately seeking for a method of survival. She didn't answer the question, but it seems that Midday had determined that she'd agreed.

Midday nodded slowly before taking in a large breath, enough to fill his chest to the brim with air, then then slowly let it out as everything changed.

In that moment, Valeri could only believe that her eyes were playing tricks on her. The man before her began to glow with a powerful gold, exactly the same as he had worn on countless occasions during her training, and yet it was so much more powerful now. No, not just powerful…

Divine.

The light bled off of him with an intensity that she could only equate to the sun itself, the rays of light burning with the quiet heat of the midday sun. She gasped as she saw the change to the sword in his hands, from a tattered thing into a warm bronze metal. The metal was burnished by the sun itself, as if it were a piece of the sun's rays that had been broken off and then forged into metal.

Questions that Valeri didn't even know she had were being answered as she watched the man, who may be younger than her, transform into something so far beyond her comprehension.

He was not just named Midday. He was midday.

He shone with midday's light, the heat of its rays against her skin. He shone with the Sun's full power, a reflection of the impossible might that the celestial body wielded.

She was tiny in his presence, any Might that she had at her disposal was nothing against what he represented. Her own blessing was powerful, yet it had been something she'd almost entirely ignored throughout her life. Now, however, she was faced with a being of Divinity, watching the Sun's power course across Midday's skin like rivers of ever-burning gold.

She gasped under the pressure that the power gave off, as if the presence of it was enough to smite the unworthy, the blasphemous.

"Do you understand?" Midday's voice called, clear even through the ruching blood through Valeri's ears and the thundering heartbeat. Valeri nodded rapidly, gasping for air under Midday's power, and in a blink the oppressive power was gone. In its stead, there was the glorious warmth of the comforting sun.

"A Demigod?" She gasped, looking up to Midday's eyes, the irises now a perfect mixture of the sea-green and gold, intermingling to create the most powerful colour she'd ever seen.

Midday laughed warmly, a note of elation in his own voice, "No. Demigods are… different than even this, Valeri. They are more in their essence." The esoteric words meant nothing to Valeri, but her mind made the connection, just as she realised that Midday had intended her to.

"Maximilian." She said simply. He didn't nod, or respond in any way shape or form, but she knew that she was right. Maximilian wasn't just a man, not just any man. She had wondered why she'd been so drawn to him, that she'd even considered that she might have been in love with him, for just a moment within those first days.

She had wondered why she was made so easily smitten within less than a day's worth of conversation. She had wondered why she felt as if he could see to the very core of her being with little more than a glance, stripped bare in front of his mundane looking eyes.

It was because he was no man at all. He was far, far more than that. And now that she understood, she came to a conclusion, one that defied the way she'd seen herself within the world since she was born.

No, she wasn't worth Maximilian's time. She was nothing in the face of him and his goals.

"Valeri." Midday said, his words almost softly consoling her as she came to the devastating reconceptualization of her sense of self, "Once, I was a beggar. Worth nothing, and capable of even less. I was nothing, in the face of him, even back then. Now, he has allowed me to become more." He gestured to himself gently, the action almost regal. She gawked at the words, the severe dichotomy between a beggar and who he was now.

"How?" She asked simply. She could see the slight crinkles at the sides of his eyes underneath the mask, and he then held the sword out in one hand, loosely holding it within his grip.

"I will tell you, if you can survive against a single blow of my sword."

Valeri gulped against the rising fear, a perfect understanding that she couldn't possibly survive against the man's overwhelming power. But even as she understood, she couldn't help but let the words slip out from between her lips, her eyes burning with the determination she'd tried so hard to truly get a grasp of her entire life.

"Do it." She said, her face pulling into a grimace while she waited, she expected the domineering blow to flash out and end her.

When Midday's arm moved, her mind slowed it all down so she could examine his every movement as the bronze blade shone with the Sun's cruellest rays. The sword inched closer and closer, slow in the molasses of her perception. She tried to force her body to react fast enough to block it, yet she moved impossibly slow in comparison.

She realised, after a few heavily warped moments, that she wasn't going to be able to block the blow, or even come close. So instead, she decided to twist her body away from the approaching blade, dropping her own, and offering up an arm to the bronze metal's hungry edge.

The blade drew nearer still, finding it only centimetres away from her arm. She closed her eyes, preparing herself for the scorching pain she was sure she'd experience. Yet it never came, the heat on her skin from the direct rays of sunlight suddenly diminished into something cooler and quieter.

"Lady Ephars, behind me please." An instantly recognisable voice called out, even as an arm shifted her form powerfully away from where she'd been, making her stumble back from where the approaching blade had been.

When she snapped her eyes open, confused by the sudden change in atmosphere, she saw the owner of that familiar voice standing just in front of Midday.

Yeram, her very own attendant, stood there stoically facing the golden man, his entire body cloaked in an undeniable layer of deep shadows. The sabre he held in his hands, a powerfully crafted blade with the flats of the blade covered in runes, leeched shadow like water.

However, before Valeri could even make an exclamation of surprise, Midday's burning aura amplified to a level beyond what he'd shown her. His aura of sunlight was almost impossible to look at without her eyes feeling the searing pain of its brightness.

"Well, I guess we found your little minder." Midday spoke jubilantly, "A Shadow Walker no less. Let's have a good fight, shall we?"


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