Abyssal Road Trip - 575 - In my place

Amdirlain’s PoV - Vehtë - Laški

After they trained the teenagers for an hour, Amdirlain called a halt. Together with Aggie, they exchanged bows with the youngsters and left through the training yard exit. Outside the guild, Amdirlain again slipped past the mental shields that protected Aggie’s mind. When they moved along the main road, people yielded quickly to Aggie’s imposing presence; their deference extended to Amdirlain, whom many guessed to be Aggie’s assistant.

It’s not me drawing attention, at least not presently!

“I’m rightfully considered unsubtle, but you provided Marcin so many hints,” Amdirlain projected.

“I owe everything I have to you, Amdirlain. I know you don’t like titles, but people being disrespectful to you isn’t acceptable,” Aggie replied. “Why are you using this disguise?”

“I’m trying to learn a bit of subtlety.”

Aggie glanced sideways. “How did Gurn react to you knocking a Dragon down with a single punch?”

“He is trying to work out my Dragon type, and what age moulting category I fit into.”

“I hear your type is a nice red diamond nowadays,” Aggie noted. “Where is Sarah presently?”

Amdirlain beamed. “We’re educating a tribe of primitive elves on another world. Do you have any suggestions for how you’d blend in?”

“I’ll get back to you after I think about it.” Aggie switched to speaking. “Where are you heading now?”

“To where I’m boarding. Are you staying in Laški?”

“Yes, there is much to do.” Aggie tilted her head east, and her gaze went cold. “I’ll open the temple and see where that leads. Can we speak later tonight?”

“Yep.” With a nod farewell, Amdirlain turned west towards the bridge. She reached out and found Dobromir wasn’t drawing close to home, so she hastened her pace.

With her own Charisma thoroughly suppressed, she had to dodge through streets crowded with people returning home from work. Few had ventured to a public bath, crowded together and sweat-stained from their day’s labour in the barely faded heat of the day. As she slipped past a group of unwashed men, the scent of burnt wood scrubbed at her nostrils, and a memory flashed and sparked in her mind.

Mal’s soot-stained face arose from within a fragmented memory; he wore his volunteer bushfire uniform, dirty from a day helping control a blaze. The conversation skipped and jumped, slivers of memory lost to the splitting of her spiritual net. She grasped for it, but the emotions within the memory cut at her sense of loss, yielding not a millisecond more of the memory. Grief prompted a misstep that almost smacked her into a woman returning home, so Amdirlain slipped into a bakery line away from the flow of foot traffic.

Splintered family memories are all I have left of them now.

The old memory gnawed hard and consumed her focus. The sensation of her old primordial energy pushing hard against her spiritual net, causing it to rip against the metal that had nearly encapsulated her Soul, captured her attention. Human memories, which the combination of odours had invoked, tried to draw her into that desperate battle for her existence. That transformative fight for survival, which had so nearly ended in the destruction of her present awareness, had insights bubbling about wildly yet still teasingly out of reach.

“What will you have?”

A gruff, smoky voice snapped her Avatar’s attention from its contemplations, and she stood at the counter of a bread shop. She had shuffled along in the stall line, unheeding of her surroundings as she fought to grasp for the lost pieces. Before her was a weary-faced man, red hair fading into white, clothing stained from a day in the stall’s heat.

“Sorry, my mind was elsewhere.”

The storekeeper regarded her with only the slightest of pauses. “Don’t get many of your race.”

“We all need to eat. If you baked them today, fourteen of the round buns.” Amdirlain jabbed a finger towards the rack behind the server, which contained wholemeal buns the size of her fist.

“Not my baking, but they were fresh this morning.”

With the usual cost to locals pilfered from his mind, she set down the copper coins on the counter and waited. 

He started to open his mouth to haggle, but the unintentional darkness in her gaze stopped his words cold. He pulled the basket from the shelf, and his tongue nearly tripped over itself as he hurriedly counted out her order. Amdirlain set an extra copper down in apology before she stored the buns and drifted into the crowd, the moment of revelation fading away.

I’ll get hold of those insights yet, despite the unfortunate disruption.

She slipped through the crowd with renewed vigour, the sharp, precise motions prompting people to step aside.

The rest of the trip back to the apartment block passed in a blur, as memories played phantasms and slipped between her fingers. She quickly found herself on the top balcony, standing before the door of her hosts. A quick tap on the whitewashed door sent loose flakes falling and drew a boisterous response as the four youngest children argued over who would answer it.

Zlota yanked the door open and beamed at her with a wide grin. “Good evening, Jay. Did you fight any monsters today?”

Beyond her, Radomir glared sullenly at his older sister’s spine; her foot had his lead foot pinned to the floor. Crowded behind him in a press of bodies were Neda and Mieszko. Though the cloth drapes and partial walls dividing the apartment were unchanged, clean rushes covered the floor. They had the table already set with a range of food, and Roksana was placing plates, while her siblings acted up.

“You’ve not even let Jay inside,” Vida called from the pantry area, where she was busily chopping off slices from a cheese wheel. “One of you get her a drink.”

“Sorry, Jay,” Zlota murmured. She lifted her foot from Radomir’s, and the others spilled backwards to make space before the door.

“Dinner will be ready shortly,” Vida offered as Zlota let her in the door.

“I’ve extra rolls for my contribution,” Amdirlain said. “Where should I put them?”

Vida passed her a shallow woven bowl with a smile and tapped the top of Mieszko’s head as he reached for an orange. “Wait for your Siam’ja.”

A forlorn sigh escaped from the youngest boy. “Yes, Маці.”

Why does my brain sometimes refuse to translate the words for parents? Trauma, obviously, but it’s a weird glitch.

Voices from dozens of lifetimes echoed in her thoughts as the family assembled for dinner. When the five children and parents crowded around the table with Amdirlain, memories of her Earth family’s extended gatherings teased elusively at the back of her mind.

“Are you alright, Jay?” Roksana asked

“Just some memories distracting me tonight,” Amdirlain admitted.

Roksana squared her shoulders at the words. “It’s alright if you need to skip the lessons tonight.”

“We’ll have lessons after dinner. I’ve got some minor tools to help you with training Mana Manipulation. We’ll talk about that later,” Amdirlain replied.

With that news, the children’s eating pace increased, and they fired off questions from the morning’s magical lessons between bites. 

After Radomir almost choked on a piece of bread, Vida grumbled. “No more questions about magic until after you’ve eaten.”

“Маці,” Zlota protested.

“No more. There are things I’d like to ask, yet Jay also needs to eat. The next question someone asks means none of you gets lessons tonight. Any complaints, and there won’t be lessons in the morning either. Be respectful of Jay and her time.”

The children lowered their heads and gave an abashed acknowledgement before lifting their gazes. They ate the rest of the meal in silence, and the stillness eased a smile onto Dobromir’s tired expression.

After dinner, Amdirlain handed out some slates and chalk sticks to the boys sitting on either side of her, and Zlota across from her. She’d set the top of each with the first twelve letters of their alphabet. With quick strokes of a chalk stick, she copied the first letters, and cleaned the slate with an attached cloth before setting them to copy the letters.

“But can’t we learn magic?” Radomir asked.

“This is a piece of learning it properly. If you’re not proficient in reading and writing before your Class Vision, you won’t get offered the Wizard Class. Your older sisters already know how; it's time for you to learn.”

“But why?” Mieszko grumbled.

“Magic requires knowledge to learn and wield properly. Respect it by learning as much as you can.” Amdirlain provided a metal sphere in different hues, four centimetres in diameter, to the parents and eldest girls before she eyed the youngest girl and the boys. “These are used to teach mana manipulation. Once you can fluently write the alphabet, I’ll provide you with your own as well. The sphere becomes attuned to an individual's Mana, so don’t touch someone else's. Is that understood?”

The boys nodded, and Zlota chimed. “Yes, Jay.”

Amdirlain stood and had them slide together onto the one bench. “I’ll judge which of you makes the most progress tonight.”

She held up a single piece of rock candy and set it atop an empty plate; the rich scent of maple wafted from it.

As Zlota laughed excitedly, the boys snatched up the chalk sticks and started copying the letters.

The first lines they made were rough and uneven, but the prize within reach on the table prompted them to try harder.

While Amdirlain taught the others Mana Manipulation using the orbs, she listened to the arguments unfolding in Lord Plamen’s manor as news of Aggie reopening Lerina’s temple reached him. As his fury continued to escalate, she tracked each family and staff member involved and their reactions. By the time the lessons ended, Mieszko’s initial badly dog-legged lines had straightened. 

“There will be opportunities for you each to win.” Amdirlain motioned Mieszko to claim his prize.

As people started preparing for bed, Amdirlain slipped Vida a silver coin.

“I can’t take this. You’re doing so much for us.”

“Technically, you’re all my apprentices,” Amdirlain smiled. “Should we continue with our original arrangement, or should I pay apprentice stipends, along with providing clothing, lodging, and food?”

Vida went rigid with shock and hope. “Apprentices? Would you apprentice the children? We’re too old to progress far.”

“Your own Affinity isn’t something to be taken lightly. Apply yourself, and you could learn enough to keep yourself and Dobromir alive for a few centuries. That in itself would grant you the opportunity to learn further.”

The woman fingered the grey in her hair. “I’m already old. How is it possible?”

“Aging is a type of damage to the body that various spells can repair. Life wizards can live for millennia, and while I’ll admit you’ve started late, you can still achieve a lot. I’ll be out this evening, but we can talk in the morning.”

Amdirlain patted Vida’s shoulder reassuringly and slipped from the apartment. She moved down a few flights of stairs and took the first opportunity to shift position across town to blend with a rooftop overlooking the regularly paved temple square. The place featured a mix of known and unknown gods, and she checked the unfamiliar symbols with Analysis as she considered the Slavic architectural style each had adopted. Fired red clay tiles sheathed the rounded, multi-tiered roofs while patterned bricks fashioned the insignia of each god, standing out from the frontage of otherwise grey brick walls.

Zorvan, god of time, and Vayu, god of the wind, were originally Persian, while Bacchus, Mars, Anna Perenna, Minerva, and Mithras had originated from Rome. The Temple of Týr was across the square from the nearly darkened temple of Lerina, a location flanked by Mars and Minerva. Amdirlain found it interesting that, though other deities had shrines around Laški, none had received permission to take over Lerina’s site. Beyond the alleyways that encircled the temples, Amdirlain tracked six individuals whom Plamen had hired on the move towards the rear of Lerina’s temple. In a chamber that dripped with silver and gold ornaments, the lord privy’s circle discussed whom they could gouge the most to acquire the larger sites tomorrow.

It was midnight before the stealthy individuals finally had themselves in positions to observe Lerina’s temple. Amdirlain teleported directly into the kitchen at the back of the temple and caught Aggie’s attention with a mental nudge; an image of the assassins' locations and her own. Within seconds, Aggie dropped through the kitchen’s stone roof and landed silently atop the table.

Considering all the various materials involved in the ceiling, her flow through the materials with Spirit Passage was smooth.

“Doors too good for you?” Amdirlain nodded toward the doorway to the temple’s accommodation area, one of four doors leading out of the kitchen. “Or don’t you want to leave your guests at my mercy?”

“Yes, you’re clearly plotting. I’m sure Plamen will find the outcome of his incomplete information distressing,” Aggie noted.

“They intended to attack a couple of hours before dawn,“ Amdirlain reported. “Are you worried about the rules?”

“No,” Aggie said, no longer projecting along the mental touch.

“Not even if I tell you they also work as adventurers?”

Aggie groaned. “That’s a pickle. We’ve clashed with underground guilds before, but to find adventurers taking such work is worrying. Are they recent recruits?”

“They’re all iron or silver ranked.”

A stream of colourful cursing spilled forth from Aggie, referencing assorted anatomically impossible acts.

“I suggest you brush up on your healing; that’s not where babies come from in humans,” Amdirlain quipped.

Liquid sound spilled from Aggie’s lips, carrying a Blessing that caused a sphere of air before her to shimmer. From the sphere, a wavefront erupted when those final vowels faded. Across the nearby rooftops, the would-be attackers seized up, their muscles caught in a binding paralysis.

Amdirlain opened the side door and floated Aggie’s prisoners inside. They rested awkwardly, their toppled bodies still in the posture from when the spell struck.

“I know you can all still hear me.” Aggie’s voice carried a glacial chill. “Your approach triggered detectors that warned me of your ill intent. You’ll each get one opportunity to provide information about your employer. If you don’t take that chance, it as your last choice.”

That’s fair. I’m a living detector.

Aggie teleported each Assassin off to their own sparse, dusty room, leaving their clothing and gear behind. The spots they arrived in had once housed those studying to become priests of Lerina. A ward slid over each room, the door sealed, and the narrow windows gained magical bars.

“I’ll let them stew until the paralysis fades, rather than end the Blessing.”

“Your Grand Adjudicator Prestige Class is showing. Can I ask why you didn’t hold out for the evolution option instead of taking that Prestige Class at Tier 7?”

“You peeked using Analysis,” Aggie huffed.

“I don’t need to anymore, since I can hear enough details in people’s songs. It’s not my decision to make for you. I’m trying to understand the different perspective.”

“You’ve never had an issue understanding people before. What happened?”

“Let’s say I’m worried I lost pieces while recovering myself that impacts my understanding, so I don’t want to assume I’m getting it right,” Amdirlain said.

“After so much bloodshed, I just wanted to settle my gains. Anyway, insights into Immortal Spirit provide me an evolution route, so a Prestige Class isn’t required.”

“You have a point there. If you get it to evolve, you might find yourself on the Primordial Path,” Amdirlain offered.

“That’s not my priority,” Aggie replied. “I never sought more power; for me, it was about helping people and improving lives. Sometimes, apparently inconsequential things make all the difference, yet other times a powerful guide provides the confidence to take risks. That’s something you helped me see.”

“May I ask what Dao you follow?”

Aggie’s brows lifted. “You tell me.”

Not doable while in my Avatar state.

“Classes are one thing, I can tell the parameters and name. A Dao is more a matter of philosophy than a Class’s applied classification with ability sets provided.”

“My focus is rejuvenation, which is part of the reason I took on my current role in the guild. Things have become stagnant in places.”

“How so?”

“It’s not that things aren’t happening; however, activity and progress aren’t the same.” Aggie frowned and swept her arm towards the east. “Across most places in the republic, there are three main levels of government, authority, whatever you want to call it. While there are occasional shifts in balance, none of those have changed. The Republic’s structure is more of a uniting treaty. Though it possesses adjudicators and courts, they’ve lost they're power, weakened via ancient priests and other important persons declaring they’re what they used to be, and what’s wrong with that?”

“Whereas the treaty was a minimal set of requirements everyone could agree to for the initial unification?”

“Yes!” Aggie slapped the table in frustration. “We made advancements for hundreds of years, but in the last hundred, we’ve slid backwards socially at an increasing rate. Frustratingly, it comes despite the advancements in arcane technology. Once again, local authorities are ruling like petty tyrants and doing what they will. The guild’s focus is on adventurers, so as long as they’re getting paid, the guild doesn’t get involved in local situations.”

“Then how does joining the guild’s council help with rejuvenation?”

Aggie checked through the kitchen cupboards and drew out a covered tea set. “The guild runs training programs for would-be adventurers. I’ve been making slow but steady progress toward having it become a solid education, rather than just combat training. Yet against so many dwindling opportunities, I fear I’m in for disappointment. Legal arrangements exist throughout the Republic that are as bad as slavery. Rot has set in during the centuries since Gail left.”

“What have they cooked up?” Amdirlain’s hands clenched so tight her joints cracked and popped.

“In some places, the local lord pays in debt markers that are redeemable only at the businesses the lord owns—goods priced so that it’s barely enough to live on. They trap them while ensuring that education and training to get better or dangerous classes isn’t available to anyone but their favourites. The information you and Gail provided about the requirements to gain classes they wield as a knife.”

Amdirlain growled. “They’ve had their fuck-around phase, and I’ve a mind to move them to the find-out step.”

“Didn’t you reach out and examine the Republic?”

“I’ve not examined any sites in particular, just let the songs blend.”

Niggled at by Minerva’s request, the temptation to scatter humanity across a few hundred worlds and render the lords’ wealth meaningless tickled at the back of Amdirlain’s thoughts.

The thought of the societal transformation it would cause had Amdirlain’s mouth twisted into a sour line.

It would leave the elves holding this continent without a significant ally, even if they didn’t all view the Human presence as beneficial.

“Did you find something awful?”

“I still have to investigate it, but I had an idea prompted by something Minerva asked me to consider,” Amdirlain replied. “What will you do with the prisoners?”

“Those who don’t cooperate, I’ll use as examples.” Aggie rattled around in other cupboards, tossing cracked cups aside. “Though, since they are guild members, I’ll need to involve Marcin.”

“Why are you doing that? Nothing is sealed, so the utilities and crockery are all slick with dust.”

“We can clean it, and it seems wasteful not to use what’s around,” Aggie said. “I asked you the wrong question before. Forget my question about your disguise. Why are you here, Amdirlain? What do you need to obtain?”

Amdirlain eliminated all the dust from the kitchen and perched on a bench seat. “I’m trying to recapture parts of myself, but I don’t know if they survived to be regained.”

An illusion of a metal sphere appeared at the centre point of the table, with a spider’s web of filaments being pressed into its surface. Among the network of junctions, the pattern of her old phoenix sigil blazed. Golden light radiated out from beneath each junction point, burning through a surrounding dark cloud. The tidal wave of energy and the sigil’s retreat through the central conduit played out in slow motion. The outer connections beyond the sigil ripped and tore as a force pinned it against the unyielding metal.

“What am I watching?”

“That’s what happened to my spiritual network. It was caused by a combination of factors: a Primordial artifact, energy I’d excised from myself long ago, and my Soul being freed from the curse.” Amdirlain offered a pained smile. “I lost skills, and some powers, but also pieces of memories. In places, I can feel the severed edges of my memories from when I was Human. I’ll walk into the kitchen telling my mother a joke, and I can remember leaving hours later, but nothing in between. Before the pylon freed me from my curse, I could remember the conversation we had. Is it weird? I remember I once possessed a memory of the events, yet now I can’t remember the events themselves. It effectively stole Julia’s mother from me twice.”

Julia’s mother? Why did I put it that way? She was my mother. Mr Great Saga’s scheme took those memories from me, and I’ll balance the books one day.

“Oh, Am,” Aggie clasped her hand across the table.

“While I’ll never be Human again, I want to see if living among humans might help me find slivers of what I’ve lost.”

“Why bother with this lord then?”

“He’s just the first idiot that I’ve been fortunate to find. He’s been taking from people, so I’m going to give to him.”

“What do you intend?”

“I’ve not completely decided yet,” Amdirlain admitted. “It will have to be suitably unpleasant, for all the people he’s killed and choices that he’s stolen by denying children an education from the daughters.”

She shifted her filtering, and the frustrated, tired songs of the populace pulsed through her veins, jagged splinters of their fears abrading her nerves.

“Some parents are teaching their children, but others are exhausted, busy, or themselves lacking knowledge to educate their children. Monsters were supposed to provide a living example; a way to balance the species that could obtain souls, so they didn’t have to prey on each other, while looking to advance.”

“Instead, some people still make evil choices.” Aggie sighed. “I’m glad Immortal Spirit cut down on the amount of sleep I need. Let’s have some tea and talk while you plot.”

A Spell filled the pot with steaming hot water.