Chapter 207: A Perfect Opportunity

  In the 8th month, the Kallidians took full advantage of the summer warmth, enjoying the blessings of warmth and sun. Several skimpily clad bodies suntanned upon the roof, potbellies, wrinkles, grey hair of age, and human imperfections all on display in a wonderful and ordinary celebration of life and humanity. Thick winter quilts, plush fur rugs, and rich curtains were washed and hung on clotheslines to sun dry, sparing the use of drying wands for the more economical alternative. Several children kicked around a ball, bouncing it on sloped roofs that obligingly returned the ball down to the players. Store owners were hawking their wares, and the city bustled with traffic. A group of men carried fishing poles that bounced with their steps, loud and guffawing, on their way to a nearby brook or lake to try their luck, and some mead to soothe if luck didn’t bite (and even if it did). In the distance, a brawl broke out, the sparring kind, but that occurred rain or shine, day and night.

  Laius wasn’t so relaxed as to be basking, but he was enjoying the weather as the rest of the city.

  “Lord Sotir? If I may disturb you.”

  The gold ranker Jago Dahl had not gone unnoticed to Laius, of course. For all his amiable and approachable personality, he was a man of politics and nobility, more in this honorable sense than the blue-blooded sense, although both were true. As member of the Continental Congress, Laius wondered what Jago wanted with him. He wasn’t the type to approach a diamond ranker foolheartedly.

  Laius nodded assent. Jago was at least a pleasant sort of company. He’d entertain him, on this fine day.

  Jago agreeably settled next to Laius, not standing on ceremony. Laius’ sleek frame and jet-black fur was a stark contrast to Jago’s muscular frame and snow-white fur, contrasting like fire and ice, light and darkness, water and vinegar, citrus and cream…

  “It’s an honor that you would train my son,” Jago said with a warm grin. “He’s been a troublesome lad for some time, he’s been shaping up, it’s a relief for his old da and pop.”

  “As you’ve planned?” Laius inquired.

  “I’m no mastermind,” Jago denied with a laugh. “But I had thought the lassie’s treasures might knock him about the head. Whaddya know, some hypocrisy shook right on out!” he demonstrated, knocking his own noggin with a rap. “Sometimes the youngins just need a catalyst. He may not be ready to fly the coop just yet, but he’s ready to be a crafter, heart and soul. What more can I ask for?”

  Laius nodded his congratulations. “A great path.”

  “Creation is,” Jago agreed. “Though it’s never been in my blood. Sometimes I wish I could share in my son’s passion.” He shook the thought away. “Has the lassie joined a guild yet? The guild?”

  “Radiant Quill? Not yet.”

  “Taking her time?”

  “She is slow to commit,” Laius evaluated bluntly. “But what is your business?”

  “Ah, business,” Jago grumbled. “I thought I’d start with the small talk.”

  “Not so small.”

  “Aye, the youngins are no small matter, but I suppose I should get to the point. No one likes an old droner, not even the gods, I reckon, who prefer their prayers short and sweet. Time’s a’ wastin’.

  “Nekroz and the forces of Undeath have set their sights on Kallid. Their activity is likely to increase as we near the monster wave, and into its onset. It puts us in quite the pickle. Besieged on both sides, monster and undeath alike.”

  “Dangerous,” Laius agreed.

  “Aye, we’ve heard rumors that Tatiana of Wrath is involved from our contacts in Sanity’s Cusp and Nekroz proper. She’s been a thorn in our collective furry arses, always stirring the pot—more like breaking the pot, really—and just won’t settle nor treat like the rest of her lifeless Kings and Queens.”

  “An opportunity.”

  “Aye! If she insists on bringing a fight, we’ll step into the arena with her! There’s no way to avoid it, she’s coming, whether we like it or not. Your unofficial disciple and her good team have actually brought us this opportunity, by Fortune’s grace.”

  Laius raised his eyebrows inquiringly.

  “With the vampiric phylactery they acquired, we’ve perfected our ability to trap a vampire within their phylactery. Diamond rankers aren’t normally such a simple beastie to slay—no offense intended, Lord Sotir—but the quick revival of vampiric diamonds with a phylactery presents a unique opportunity.”

  “A vulnerability.”

  “Tatiana will come, and she will fight. We of the Continent Congress ask you, Lord Sotir, to infiltrate her stronghold and steal Tatiana’s phylactery. A vampire’s stronghold has layers upon layers of protection and detection, especially a diamond rank ones. The undead are known for their rituals. Tatiana isn’t, but I’d wager my best mead that she’s had a ‘friend’ emplace some. If we’re lucky, perhaps that ‘friend’ wasn’t so thorough as they could’ve been and left a backdoor for their own unkind purposes.”

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  It was an interesting proposition. The Adventure Society and Erras’ forces could not remain on the defensive against the threat of undeath, although it was a question of whether an offensive would exacerbate the issue. Maintaining the status quo was not ideal, but preferable to an all-out war. However, Tatiana was initiating aggression, and thus the Continental Congress was justified in equal retaliation. An invasion for infiltration. And if the pieces fell right, the removal of a diamond ranked queen from the board entirely.

  Moreover, it removed an aggressive force from Nekroz’s political landscape. Of the diamond rank vampires, there were only two more, Angelina and Savva, and both were amendable to peace, or rather, adverse to hostilities or entirely uncaring. The vampires were the greatest diamond rank forces of Nekroz, with the rest of their factions with one diamond rank each and comprised otherwise of gold rankers.

  Jago’s request of him was likely one of opportunity—Laius, compared to most other diamond rankers around, was adept at stealth. Amara wouldn’t do; she would storm the stronghold and steal the phylactery with brute force. Tyranel was capable of infiltration and deception, but it would be irresponsible for her to leave her kingdom with the threat of a diamond ranker, monster wave, and apocalypse beast. She was, with Nekroz’s machinations, pinned down.

  The Continental Congress’ intention, then, is for their infiltration to go entirely unnoticed, to sow confusion, to cast aspersions onto Tatiana’s ritualist, with the justification of mutual interference as a fallback plan.

  “A perfect opportunity,” Laius concluded.

  “Unlikely to ever be one better,” Jago agreed. “And if there is, we should seize that one as well! Will you do us this favor?”

  There was no doubt. “I will.”

  *****

  Cornelis was…not unappreciative of the opportunity offered to him, he just wasn’t grateful, nor ungrateful either. He had escaped the Advent attack on astral magic experts embraced in the safety in the City of Water, Vasenne, the Heart of Adventurers.

  But he had lived in Vasenne all his life, he was not so enthused to leave the city, and another world brought new dangers. He was one of the few Illusae born on Erras, nurtured in a world with far more magic to spare, fertile and giving, that it consolidated cheekily onto the ground, like buds in spring.

  That was not to say he was not committed to their cause. Each Erras-born Illusae had a choice, to contribute to the cause, or to live their lives as normal, in the cradle of Erras, uninvolved in the fate of their origin-world. Each option had their advantages—the mission to save Edelster-jos was in all aspects altruistic and good. It harmed no one, only seeking to improve the situation of the misfortunate, and Cornelis could acknowledge the significant magical advances their mission brought about as well.

  And although he had never seen his origin-world, he still felt the pangs of what would happen should their origin-world die. A race with no heart and no core. He could not fully understand the acute and quiet desperation that Zariel felt for his home world, but Cornelis did feel the emptiness of a calendar with no celebrations and festivities, no meaningful traditions, buried in a world he did not know. While he was a man of the future, he looked at himself and wondered what history had been left behind.

  Their alliance with Fertility had accelerated the propagation of their race on others from Edelster-jos on Erras, although their numbers would never compare to their population on their origin-world. Thus, the gods of this world permitted their presence, as long it was in benefit to Erras as well. For some, Erras was their home world. In another few hundred years, perhaps their race would be commonplace as any other, and just another in the makeup of Erras.

  His revelation was part of that other plan, to begin the integration of the Illusae, Blaiud, Muizen, and Benevelen: the races of their world that did not exist on Erras naturally.

  Nothing for it; Cornelis believed in the cause, both causes. He’d see what a travesty the magic of her world was. His origin-world was an astral travesty; This would be practice for the real thing, and perhaps a crucial variable in the equation that’d fix the mess of his origin world.

  ***

  He regretted it all already. That outworlder’s world was headache inducing. The people of that world were just as entitled as she was, demanding solutions and information he just didn’t have within the scant day he’d spent here.

  “No,” he snapped at a functionary that was hovering, “I do not have answers to your fuck up of a world yet. I am ONE person.”

  An array of tiny mirrors flitted around him, collecting information from the supermassive astral space that their instructions did not detect. Data collection alone would occur over the course of weeks, just for a preliminary analysis, and then would continue among his other duties here. He still needed to gather information on their environmental technologies on Edelster-jos’ behalf, and eventually set up a diplomatic avenue for the exchange of expertise.

  Headache inducing!

  This matter was best left to Zariel, who likely was just waiting for the outworlder to be able to transport silver rankers. He was thankful, at least, that the outworlder had advised them to take on human forms and maintain them for the entirety of their stay. Their incessant questions and self-serving needling were already intolerable, he didn’t even want to imagine how intolerable it’d be if he revealed he was another race. The outworlder, he noted, also adopted the fa?ade of a human, and had not divulged her outworlder peculiarities to them.

  There was much for Cornelis to do to salvage this world’s wreck of an understanding of astral magic—Magic in general! There was this odd duplicity of letting oddities slide ‘because it’s magic’ and yet denying magic’s existence in the first place. Their reports were a mixture of irregular terminology: what their higher ups insisted things be called to maintain their self-denial, and how the rank and file referred to the events of which they interacted on a daily basis. He did appreciate their decimal base ranking system, far more accurate than the low-mid-high approximations Erras used, although such precision was also unnecessary for the average adventurer, who only needed to judge if an entity was approximately too powerful to defeat. Their detection array had an impressive capability of detection the location and strength of monsters and essence users. If Cornelis didn’t have the task of categorizing their environmental technologies, he’d direct his efforts there.

  Apparently the outworlder was fixing their understanding of essence progression, at least that was being accomplished… Small mercies that none pestered him over that.