I sat within the Brightspark relaxedly, drinking from a cup of pleasant-smelling alcohol which left something to be desired from the taste. I lounged within the fourth-floor bar room, entertaining myself idly with using the whispers of the Hearth influence that I’d once received from Ehra. I could still somehow delineate between good and bad drinks, sometimes even getting flashes of momentary inspiration for something to add to the drink to fix it.

This bartender, while decent at his job, was nowhere near the standard that the Ehra faithful had set for me. His concoctions were uninspired and textbook, and while that clearly serviced the gold encrusted fools in the bar with me, it wasn’t anything special no matter how you sliced it.

Of course, the rich kids probably couldn’t tell either way, the different qualities of the alcohols in their drink less important than the amount of money that the drink itself had cost, with aged drinks being so rare due to the short time since many of the races had actually been put on Virsdis.

It was interesting, and one of the few liquor brands that had managed to start aging alcohol early enough to get fifty-year aged rum was clearly going gangbusters, though it wasn’t that much more special than the rum you could get your hands on in the northern street stores. If you went west and made alcohol out there, the natural heat of the weather, in what was effectively a dry plains, would make it great for quickly aging alcohol.

Though, that was if you had a way of dealing with the quite hostile Tiliquan tribes. Being attacked every other day would certainly make it difficult to offset the cost of, you know, dying.

Anyway, long story short, the alcohol was decent, and the bartender was horrifically misusing it for the sake of the dollar tag that could be ascribed to it. He also wasn’t making personalised drinks, just those off of the board that could be seen by anyone, which meant that each drink had a social value within the establishment.

Though, the most expensive drink tasted like absolute ass, which was hilarious to me after I had watched in horror as the man mixed together the liquids soullessly. When I had downed it, like you might a shot, the surrounding inhabitants of the bar had looked at me like I was insane. Which, if I had a regular human body, would have been a horrific choice.

Thankfully, alcohol is effectively a strong-tasting juice, and unless I actively let it affect my brain there is next to no effect for more than a few scant moments. Just another thing that can’t kill me. I’ll take it.

I lounged within the plush chair for a long thirty minutes, my mind slowly ticking over the ideas I kept hidden away from the world. Honestly, I found it somewhat amusing to plot the downfall of much of Crossroads’ elite while I literally drank exorbitantly expensive liquor right next to them.

Some of them I remembered from passing encounters, my brain no longer one to misremember something so simple as a name and a brief history. Though, I almost wish that my brain would just forget them and their petty little lives. They were just about as inconsequential as it got, in the grand scheme of things.

Maybe one or two of them could minorly sway the outcome of any given action I took, but nothing so grand as to ruin my plans in any overt way. They may be rich, but they were all pomp and vanity, barely sharing a practically minded braincell between them. So that was why I was here, other than just to drink the revolting cocktails for my own amusement while I planned.

My mind helpfully kept tabs on the emotional sphere that sat around me, the majority of it being rather dour for a place so filled with alcohol, though the lower floors certainly tried to make up for it with the party that seemed ready to persist late into the night. The floors up from there got progressively quieter, and the floor above was even cold.

It wasn’t cold in that there was no one within the rooms above, but that those inside the rooms above us were like you’d think a snake would feel. Without the breadth of emotions you could witness just by walking down the street, those inside those rooms were filled with the calculation you’d expect from someone of Yeram’s past.

Though, with the sorts of wealth that those above possessed, they’d almost have to be that way. Only very few I have met stayed independent enough from the source of their wealth to remain untouched by its influence. Valeri and Lucae being the only two I could think of off the top of my head, though there were certainly others that held the ability to be so, if they were half as determined as Valeri or as wickedly sharp as Lucae.

I hummed gently into my glass as I savoured the mediocre taste of the drink within, something that sorely needed a generous splash of a citrusy juice of some kind. As I dreamed of a better tasting drink, I felt an emotional presence I was keeping tabs on leave the top floor, slowly walking down the stairs that dared to connect to the floor from behind the bar.

I had been keeping tabs on the bar and those within it idly, just with the spare brain power that was left over between other thoughts. I had clearly realised when a man, one that I didn’t immediately recognise, rose from his seat and left the bar through the main doorway, a moment of slight anxiety fixating his mind as he came to the grand flights of stairs and ascended to the top floor.

I had felt the man’s vague emotions from the floor below, not quite able to read them with the veracity I might be able to if he were to be in the same room as me. Certainly not as clearly as If I were looking him in the eye. That had continued for likely close to fifteen minutes before the man descended once again, down a pair of service stairs that led to a door behind the bar.

I gave a quick glace towards the door, training my eyes on it as it opened outward, obscuring my view of the man while I heard the faintest noise as he called out to the bartender. After a brief moment of conversation between the two men, the door remained open as the bartender moved up against the bar top and swallowed deeply before opening his mouth to speak.

“Maximilian Avenforth.” The man called; his voice surprisingly pleasant in comparison to his mixed drinks. I turned a lazy eye towards the man, finding him looking directly at me with a solid eye. The room came to a stop, the bubbling conversation came to a quiet hush as eyes turned and whispers grew.

For just a moment, I let my eyes lock with the man’s delving deep into his emotions and finding them to be perfunctory at best. The man didn’t care, past a slight interest in why I was being called to the room above. The shared gaze gave me the orders that I needed, then a slight gesture of his head towards the door behind the bar, clearly pointing towards the way they would like to receive me.

I stood from my seat, looking towards the door pensively as it remained open, coaxing me to enter it… yet I wasn’t quite interested in taking the service stairway. What an ingenious way to shape the relationship that you had with those that sat above. A nice bit of social power to exercise over those that walked up those steps, that were likely to be as demeaning as possible for those who lived the high life like they did.

I brushed off my pants lightly, then adjusting the cuff of my blazer slightly while letting a large grin grow on my face. The man smiled back, a reflex of his service industry training, but that smile evaporated quickly when I did a ninety degree turn and began striding towards the main doors of the bar.

There was a moment of stunned silence before I could feel the bartender’s shock turn into action as he no doubt alerted the other man of my departure. However, as I made my way out of the doors of the bar and felt the other man start moving, I grinned wolfishly as the doors closed behind me and blocked off any sight of me.

I walked down the short hallway with a quick step, then hopping lightly onto the bannister that separated the walkway from the precipitous drop down a flight of stairs, walking on the wooden railing for a moment before jumping almost weightlessly to the other side of the building, skirting across the wall that surrounded the flights of stairs before truly enacting the Sharah and simply walking up the wall between the gorgeous stained-glass windows that opened it up to the outside world.

As I reached the top of where the fourth floor’s ceiling became the fifth’s floor, I jumped from the stone wall, flipping gracefully with my legs outstretched towards the roof, arcing down and impacting the floor with the flats of my feet solidly. My shoes held admirably, the shoemaker—which I have since been informed is a ‘cordwainer’—had done excellent work with making them as tough as reasonably possible. They hadn’t fallen apart just yet, and it seemed that they would be staying that way.

I strode down the hall in the direction that I could feel the passive emotions of the few that existed on this floor, all within one room. I could feel the emotions of the man who’d been sent to collect me as he ran through the service entry and up towards that room. However, I was faster, and my steps reached the door of that room before the man had even made it halfway up the stairs.

So, it was with a grand flourish and loud bang that I pushed the double doors open to reveal a large sitting room, walls filled with books and liquors, while the floor was crowded with chairs of various sizes and makes. However, it was the centre of the room that I was looking for. In four chairs sat three men and one woman that I’d never seen before. Though, just from a cursory glance, I could hazard a guess.

The man closest to me, with his back turned, was tall against the lower back of his chair. His chocolate brown skin stood in stark contrast to the crisp white collar of his shirt, the back of his head covered in short and almost clumped into small bundles until it reached the top of his head which faded into a full and tightly compacted layer of hair. The man didn’t bother to turn to me, but I could hazard a guess at the young master of the Teren family.

Julian Teren, a descendant of a princess from Veringohs and a massively wealthy merchant, wasn’t quite as impressive as Valeri’s family name, but it was enough for him to make it into this room. If he were to stand at full height, I could guess that he’d likely dwarf my own height, making him a strikingly formidable posture outside of the taller races.

The woman, sitting just to his right in the little circle of chairs, was probably Werna Litz, a native from the Brauhm Empire whose mother was insightful enough to realise the potential that Crossroads had as a trade partner with Brauhm.

Across from Julian directly sat a short, pale man, almost sickly in comparison to Julian’s healthy brown complexion and physical stature. The man barely had his eyes open, and a quick look into his emotions told me that he was currently making big choices, though I couldn’t exactly glean any real specifics from sight alone. I couldn’t get a read on the man, but from the small patch of blue and gold on his suit’s collar, I could hazard a guess and say that he was likely a son of a high ranking Official.

The last man laid slouched in his chair, suit ruffled and creased in places while he held a wide and stout glass I his hand, slowly sipping on the drink as I paced into the room, grabbing a large chair nearby and easily swinging it over my head as I walked right into the middle of the circle and placed it dead centre.

The man looked up at me lazily, his actions drunk and sloppy, but his eyes and emotions sharp. But, almost in protest, I took a seat, looking directly at the man, crossing my legs and grinning right into his face, his unruly brown hair not all that dissimilar than my own, though considerably longer and more unkempt.

“Well, I heard you called after me?” I asked with a note of jolly in my voice, waiting only a moment longer as the man who had been sent to fetch me burst through one of the side doors and entered into the room with a moment of bluster before seeing me sitting there.

“Thank you, Owen.” The woman said, her voice imperious and cold, “Please return to the bar downstairs. I will send the noblewoman of your choice to your bed tonight, as a gift.”

The man, who I hadn’t even bothered to look at, seemingly nodded and retreated from the room slowly, leaving us to sit in silence as I stared towards the interesting man in front of me. There was a light cough, trying to break me from my interest in the somewhat famous young master of the Bluze household, the drunkard merchant.

Funny that I would meet with the grandson of the man who had the foresight to start making liquor from day one after being put here. Though, I’m not sure that he’d be particularly proud of the excess that had been borne from his success.

“Yes, we did indeed call for you.” The deep, silky voice of Julian Teren spoke, resounding around the room as if it were played through an amplifier, “And we are… interested in what it is you might be doing in our city, Mr. Avenforth.”

I didn’t turn away from the drunkard I’d set my eyes on, a grin growing on my face as the other man’s expression grew increasingly neutral on his pensive features. Hayden Bluze was an astute man, and I wouldn’t be surprised if my next words were already dawning on him before I’d even said them.

So, with a regal laugh, I let the grin grow wider and spoke my magic words; “Oh, nothing special. Just a little insurrection, of course!” I turned quickly towards the son of an Official, who had since lifted his face to look at me, shocked. I let my grin falter theatrically, a moment of manufactured awkwardness, “Nothing personal?”