The docks were alive with the creaking of timbers, the clatter of barrels rolling down gangplanks, and the hoarse cries of men hauling at ropes. Great ships lay side by side, their holds stuffed with oil or ready to take on fresh provisions. Sailors scrambled up masts, while dockworkers hauled crates of farm produce and barrels of wine from ships, unloading their cargo at the bustling port of Oestia, Cremia.
"So, is this the king's idea?"
"What?"
Naram-Sin probably didn't hear him over the clanging of chains as galley were prepared, and the shouts of overseers driving gangs of laborers.
"I said—is this the king's idea?" the head merchant repeated.
Naram-Sin smiled but did not answer directly, "The king is a visionary, but he cannot manage every coin that flows through Drakoria. That's why I am here. The question is--do you want to be part of the new order, or left behind in the old?"
"Very well" the head merchant said, rolling up the agreement parchment. "We will get back to you when we've gone through it properly"
Naram-Sin gave a silent nod as the man turned to leave. He wasn't sure how it would play out—the man is the head of one of the biggest merchant group in the continent—but it didn't trouble him. Unless he is able to sway the others, he would be at a disadvantage if he rejects the proposal.
Naram-Sin turned to see the head merchant returning back to him.
"Word has it that your king is looking to reclaim the silver mines in Altstadt?"
"True"
"I'm sure I'm not the first to ask about the contract in case it succeeds" the head merchant said. "So what will it take to get it?"
"I'm sure you will appreciate the complexity of such matters" Naram-Sin said. "But we will see how it goes"
"Don't disappoint me" the head merchant said, at which Naram-Sin smiled.
As the man left, a barrel crashed nearby, wine splashing the wharf. Naram-Sin's eyes flicked to the young boy responsible, noting his face without a word.
┌─────── ♕ ───────┐
I woke up early and got busy. I'm still at a point where I have to review things closely, and also there are lots of documents that needs my signature and final stamp. Quite a few things happened while I was gone.
Montreal's soap industry is stabilizing. I will have to send Ophelia their way soon, but now they would be expecting it, and it also leaves me vulnerable.
The guest on my bed stirred. A water mage. I was hoping to get something Icy but instead I got [Water sense]. Detect water. Not entirely useless but still. I would like to resume with the witches but Mittelreich's prince's marriage ceremony is in 9 days. This gives me a perfect opportunity to try for Paladin again. There's one going at the academy in Mittelreich. That's the last female left for me, my final shot. Unless the next Awakening adds a 6th Paladin to the books I would be doomed to a life without the ability to self-heal. That's a life of constant fear and doubt. It makes me nervous. What are the chances of the next one been female rather than balancing things out?
Heavy steps echoed outside. Vojnka. I had sent for her after I woke up. The door opened and she came in. A knight can only be arrested on the direct charge of the king so she must have been at home, though she reeks of sweat.
She stopped at the center of the room, eyes in the distance.
I stood up from my seat, round the desk, and relaxed on it with hands on the edge. One curious thing in the report that I didn't quite get was that Vojnka went toe-to-toe with the knight. That didn't seem right. I don't know the knight, but the only knight that should be able to stand toe-to-toe with Vojnka is Mustapha.
"What happened?"
"I didn't kill him" she said, her voice flat, eyes still adrift.
"I know you didn't" I said, her eyes left the distance to me. "I'm asking you what happened"
I couldn't tell if the eyes were confused, or suspicious, but she proceeded to narrating what happened to me, only distracted once when I had to scratch my arm.
"How did you know to suspect him?" I asked when it seemed she was done.
She hesitated then said she wasn't sure.
A lie. She's hiding something—I can see that. I wanted her to list everyone she suspected of being compromised, but she too was compromised, and I would fall into a trap of getting rid of the uncompromised ones. Or I will force them to make a desperate move. It's safer to allow them at their own pace, at least until I get my hands on self-heal.
"Go back to your duties" I told her.
Surprise flashed across her face, then relief, poorly concealed. But she still left without a bow.
It's not even safe to assume they don't know about [Copy] simply because it is yet to be exposed because I have no idea what they are planning. I will have to be more careful. Start with sleeping with the non-interesting skills inbetween the 7 days, just in case. That will even help me ascertain if I can get skills from someone I've already slept with.
I stood there thinking for a bit, then walked back to my seat and continued working. I didn't know when dawn broke, not even when the sunlight came in. I only realized when my guest was walking out. Her scent was what drew me out. I forget what perfect creatures I brought back.
"Calista?"
She turned. She was a willing participant last night but now her beautiful face bore a frown. I left my seat and walked towards her where she waited by the door.
"Do you need anything?" I asked.
She looked at me, trying to understand what I was playing at. A pale face framed by waves of raven black hair, her beauty was cold, dangerous, and entirely captivating.
"Just allow me mourn my family."
She cried silent tears when were at it but she got heavily involved which means she can be reached with a little bit of warmth. And fucking.
"That's fine" I said. "Do not hesitate to come to me if you need anything"
She looked at me again, this time with more anger in her eyes, but she said nothing and left.
She will come around, I told myself. They all will.
┌─────── ♕ ───────┐
The cliff loomed like a huge jagged stone monster as Erik made his way up. The barbarian knight had declined coming with him so he went at it alone.
The rain was hitting unrelentingly like a mighty storm, but that's how they said it often was in the rain forest, a forest where it never stops raining. Every movement was a battle against the wind, which threatened to rip him away. His hands trembled, but not from the cold. The last time he felt something exactly like this was when he used [Ghost arrow] for the king. For this he can't explain why, same way he can't explain how he lost his money.
He clung to the face, his hands numb, his body battered by the gale, knowing that retreat was as deadly as pressing on. This has to work. Going back to the court's witch may cost better part of a week since he had lost money needed for the portal. He is running out of time. He can already feel something terrible clunging at his soul, ready to rip it apart.
His grip slipped. For a moment, he dangled—boots scrabbling, breath frozen in his throat—then he managed to get a firm grip again.
He dragged himself higher, inch by miserable inch, until finally he reached the cave mouth. He scrambled up and hauled himself over the edge. Collapsing on his back, chest heaving, drenched to the bone. The rain beat down on him, and he let out a low, shaky laugh.
"You are Drakorian knight after all" said a voice that crackled like dry leaves.
The voice had caught him off guard but he was careful not to fall over. He hadn't noticed the presence at all, especially one so close. He tried to peer in the dark but the rain couldn't let him see anything. He stood and could now make the distinction of a human form in the darkness, just away from the rain splashes.
"Elda?" he asked.
She was quiet for a bit, probably considering him but it was impossible to say because he couldn't see her eyes, only her rags.
"You were to be here days ago" she finally said, and turned back to go in.
Erik didn't know what she was talking about. He believed he was exactly on time, but seeing there were no need to argue he didn't say anything and just stumbled after her, the uneven floor slick with damp.
The walls seemed close in, and a stale wind whispered from deeper within. The darkness was overwhelming and the storm drowned her footsteps so Erik followed with one hand on the cold wall, the other brushing his knife's hilt.
Soon he perceived smoke and then they arrived at an entrance. The darkness within the chambers was a far deeper gloom than that of the passage, and time had not fully dispelled the stale odor of mouldering decay that tainted the damp air.
They walked past the entrance, and there were more of it as they walk on. His nerves crawled each time he nervously stepped past a gaping doorway, and his spine pickled with a sensation of hidden scrutiny. Now and again he caught the elusive sound of scurrying and soft shuffling from within. Erik found himself praying it was only large rats startled in their lairs that he heard.
"It's the curse" the witch Elda said as if she could see through him in the darkness. "It heightens on your feelings of fear"
She led the way into a musty shelter where a bit of fire light comes from. A double curtain of hide was hung on the entrance and as he stepped through the curtains he saw that it had long been furnished for human occupancy. Shelves hewn into the rock stored bundles of herbs and crumbling scrolls and parchments. A low cot sat in one corner, piled with very old looking furs. Jars of cloudy liquid lined the far wall, and above them hung odd bones tied with string, clicking softly in the draft.
"Didn't think it will have much effect on a knight" she said as he was looking around in the dimness offered by the hearth.
She was looking at him now. She allowed herself to get old, even though she was a witch. Her face, lined with deep wrinkles, more than usual, and her hands gnarled and trembling slightly as she moved. She had a milky white eye, stark against her weathered skin, giving her stare an unsettling intensity.
"Lady Helene said you could help"
"Of course she did" Elda replied, hobbling toward a hollow in the wall. "Wouldn't want to disappoint her again after the war, would I?"
She retrieved a smoking smudge stick and approached, her steps slow and deliberate, her aged frame betraying a faint tremor.
"Strip," she commanded.
He didn't argue and took off everything, not even conscious of his less than average size. She was moving the smudge stick close to his body like she was scrubbing him, though only the smoke touched him. He had never been this involved with a witch but this wasn't what he expected.
She took the smoking smudge stick, collected an old looking stone bowl, half-filled with water, and swirl the smoking smudge stick above it. The bowl seemed to be absorbing all the smokes but the smudge stick was not running out of smoke. The water in the bowl was now thickly covered with smoke and so she returned the smudge stick, collected what he assumed to be a bone splinter and came to him again.
She handed him the bone. "Draw blood from your left wrist into this" she said, holding the bowl with both hands.
Erik looked at her for a moment then proceeded to do it. Just a bit of drop in and she said enough.
She didn't move away, she stood there relaxed with the bowl and waited. Few seconds in he could hear soft boiling. Her face turned confused, and when it began to boil even harder to the point of occasional pop up above the smoke she became tensed.
"Where did you say you killed the moonwolf?"
"Forest of Ost"
"That's not possible" she said, and before he could counter she was already walking away in half-run as much as her old body could take. She dropped the still boiling bowl on a raised stone slab.
He heard her begin to chant and soon smoke began to appear from thin air and then they gracefully twisted into what he recognized as the form of the court's witch.
"If I had known you were this upset or careless towards me I wouldn't have listened" she said, voice raised in a way that seemed uncharacteristic to her person.
"What are you talking about?"
The voice was not hers but he didn't expect it to be.
"Did you even read him?!" Elda demanded, her aged frame trembling with fury.
"No. I have been occupied, why?"
"It was a noble! That's a noble's stench on him!"
"That's not possible," came the voice of the court's witch apparition.
The apparition abruptly dispelled and the witch Elda turned away towards Erik.
"Tell me everything that happened" she said. "Not a single thing out"
And Erik did. Everything he could think of, including that of Vojnka. She paid attention with patience and an unreadable look on her.
"Dying there would have been the most humane outcome" she said casually, turning away again.
She shuffled to another hollow, retrieving a fat piece of white chalk, her movements labored, her shoulders hunched under age's burden. "What you killed was a young noble moonwolf" she continued, walking towards where the stone bowl stayed boiling. She dipped her hand in with the chalk, waited for few moments then brought it out, and held it high to her face
"And apparently a very high one"
The chalk had become the blackest thing he had ever seen.
"He shouldn't be that far-away from the depths of the Demon forest" she muttered. "Someone brought him there. Likely the same person that tricked your eyes"
She looked at him. Erik was unbothered. He stood still, his face unreadable, his breath steady.
"Your ease comes from eyes that don't see" she told him, seemingly annoyed. "Come next full moon, every moonwolf in the continent will wreck havoc to the path towards you. Thousands upon thousands. Every living in a place where your scent lingered will meet nothing but death, and when they get to you" she paused. "They will shred your soul to bits, to a point even the gods can't stitch them together, before your life ebbs away. You do not understand what it means to have your soul torn. You will not die easy, and you dragged me in with you."
Erik remained calm. "You can sever it?" he asked, and she laughed.
"No one can sever the stench of a noble's blood" she said and for the first time Erik was worried. "I can only save you from the next full moon, and save you from the next full moon again until the day you die. Any falter, and not just you, but thousands of us will die."
Erik was quiet, but this time not from calm.
"The best solution is to kill you now" she said, looking him in the eyes and his hands instinctively went to his knife. "But no one can tell how your king will react"
She made him move away from the center, and her knees cracked audibly as she crouched and began drawing a big circle.
He could barely see the black chalk on the ground but the force she drew it with convinced him it must be there, just like the clutch on his soul that seems irritated at what she was doing.