The First Human Congress

Sent by Lucian Grimes

Greetings,

You’ve been selected for your considerable power or influence to have a voice in the congress. We’ve been divided for too long, separated into pens like cattle for the slaughter, while other races have enjoyed full race utilisation. It’s time we changed that and displayed humanity’s true power.

The congress will be held in a week, on the 71st day following the Apocalypse. You can attend the congress by using a teleporter. On the day, my city’s teleporter will be made open to the public, and you can travel to Brightmoor in seconds by selecting it on the screen. Keep your retinue small, or I will be forced to cut it down into shape for you.

I look forward to seeing you and remember that your voice will remain unheard if you choose not to attend.

The message was short and sparse on specifics, and yet Silas’s jaw dropped as his eyes scanned over it. If the mail was to be believed, Lucian had sent a similar message to every noteworthy human on Idroa; how on heavens had he achieved that? Silas brought up the Buildings section and looked for communication monuments, finding his answer there as one of them was rated for global communication, simultaneously boasting a mind-boggling cost. Scrolling some more lengths down, he reached the teleporters, even the low-mass ones at ridiculous prices with the highest-mass teleporter proudly wearing a cost on its chest which he struggled to even comprehend.

He dropped down onto the couch behind him, surprising Iris who was seated beside. In fact, the entire room looked confused at his sudden change of face as he had originally stood up to offer drinks, before falling back moments later. In his shock, he failed to register what the others were saying, nor did he try to pay attention as his mind mulled over the message he had just read, but Iris’s telepathy cut through the noise and reached him.

Are you alright, Silas? Hellooo?

It was then he turned and saw Iris placing a hand on his shoulder, her face tinged with worry.

“Oh, yeah, yeah,” he answered in a rush, looking around the room apologetically. “Sorry, I just received a weird message.” He paused. “You guys help yourself to the drinks. I’m going to pop over to the other room real quick.”

Entering the dining room, he immediately noted the weird atmosphere as everyone there was holding their breath, looking towards Elise and exchanging glances between themselves. Hearing his footsteps, everyone now turned to regard him, but while most seemed surprised by his sudden appearance - and that of the others who had followed him in from the living room - Elise and Dom looked to him with conviction. He wasn’t surprised it was them considering she was the mayor, and he a fellow ranker.

“You think it’s real?” Silas asked, breaking their silence.

“I hardly see who else could afford a communication monument or teleporter like that other than him,” Elise answered.

“Do you guys want to clear all the mystery out of the air yet?” Damon’s gruff voice interrupted. He glanced around the now crowded room. “Looks like you’ve already hooked us all with the suspense, so you might as well.”

Dom chuckled, softly shaking his head at the Metalworker. “Oh, nothing serious, mate. Only that Lucian Grimes messaged us about a congress he’s going to hold. Honestly, just an everyday occurrence, eh?”

His sarcasm went unappreciated as Josh shouted out from behind Silas. “Wait the fuck up. The Warlord guy? The guy—”

“—on the leaderboards, yeah,” Silas finished, nodding. “Looks like it.”

“But how can it actually happen?” Mia asked, still sceptical. “We’re all separated, and it’s not like it’s going to have any effect on us when we’re thousands of miles away.”

“Teleporters,” Elise answered, before thinking better and forwarding the mail to all of them. “Remember, this stays in this room for the time. Don’t be stupid and send it to anyone else.”

The room went quiet again while people read through the mail, but only for a short while as it exploded into animated discussion shortly after.

“A fucking congress, man. Like what do you think he’s going to discuss there?” Josh asked. He had moved further into the room and was now standing over Natalie and Damon.

“I suppose something to do with the ratkin,” the Cyromancer offered, to which the Metalworker heartily nodded.

“Likely also things about global cooperation. Like if these teleporters are genuine, then we could set up supply chains again and really get production going,” Damon added.

“Woah, we’re getting ahead of ourselves,” Rolf said, raising his palms in a calm-it-down gesture. “We can’t even afford the cheapest teleporter, so who knows whether we will even attend this congress?”

All heads turned to Elise and waited as she stroked her chin in thought. “A week, huh? Well, if we buy nothing else in that time and raise taxes on all goods, I guess it is possible. But before you all get excited again, we should cool it like Rolf says, after all, assuming the teleporter works as intended, there’s still a possibility that there’s nothing good waiting for us on the other side.”

“Oh shit,” Dom said. “You think it’s a trap, Ellie?”

She hummed thoughtfully. “Imagine the power imbalance if we teleported there with a small group of people and they have an army waiting for us. Then they merely have to shut down the teleporter from their side, and that’s it: we’re trapped and helpless.” Elise shrugged. “They don’t have to be monsters to do monstrous things.”

The mood fell at her caution, but Silas still held hope, or rather he knew he had to go in spite of whatever awaited him. When he had gone to Montigo a month before and asked about finding Ethan and Chloe, the Seer had said his sister was far off with the Eiffel Tower in her backdrop. More importantly, he had gone on by saying that she looked to be on the top of the world, wearing fancy armour and having lackeys following her. Of course, it was still entirely possible that she wasn’t important enough to be invited to this congress, but if he asked around there, then chances were that someone had heard of her.

Once the weight of her words had sunk in, Elise continued. “Regardless, we’ll have to go. There’s too much to miss out on if we sit here twiddling our thumbs.” This brought relief to everyone, and finally the room settled down.

Suddenly, Mia seemed to remember something. “Oh, dinner.” She gestured at Silas, Ethan, and Olivia. “Come on, my little helpers.”

****

Although somewhat chaotic, the dinner party ended well. Since Elise had ordered the message to be hidden from the rest of the township, nothing was out of the ordinary for a while as a few select people discussed on how to proceed. Much to their surprise, however, the public eventually learnt of it anyway as news from New Derby made rounds with Floyd boasting of his personal invite from Lucian to the masses.

Fortunately, Silas had gotten rid of his mayoral position long ago, and so dealing with public interest became the council’s trouble and not his. Rather, he focused on himself, replacing his easy lifestyle with an intense, training-oriented one. Just because he was required to go for personal reasons didn’t mean he was going to let himself be easy pickings in case they tried to capture him.

Since the local area had been largely cleared, this meant travelling far out with Bandit and hunting powerful monsters there, or being at home and practising his skills against others of note. Dom and Josh were perfect to test his combat skills against, whereas Natalie and Mia proved formidable arcane foes for him to risk his life against. Besides this, he also did a great deal of shooting practise, aware that good aim and familiarity with various types of guns could be the difference between life and death there.

In addition to this, he also made time for runesmithing with Vedeir, the stingtail, although progress was slow. She had been born to runes and raised around them for almost her entire lifetime, finding it as easy and straight-forward as ordinary speech which he could not at all relate to. Moreover, it didn’t help that the shapes she used for her runes were mostly unidentifiable for him as she used images from her life on Xiivet to weave runes together. But it wasn’t all bad since Skully had temporarily relocated to Riverside to learn from Vedeir, and to Silas’s luck the Runesmith was a lot quicker to pick up on Vedeir’s teachings than he was, which could then be explained to him in a more familiar manner.

Ordinarily, Vedeir wouldn’t have ever dreamt of sharing her clan’s secrets - as Princess Amara had once made a note of to Silas - but she saw it as paying off her blood cost for being saved from the ratkin’s concentration camp. She had seen so many of her kin experimented to death, and she had barely survived by being saved in time, which was why she was determined to pay her debt off before leaving as many other stingtails and drakkar had already.

Either way, the week flashed by in moments with Silas gaining four levels to level 57, adding the points into constitution and agility for survivability, and one level in Duellist to reach level 14, only a step away from gaining his fourth class ability. Considering each unlocked ability had been more powerful than the last, he hoped for good things from this one.

Riverside had made enough money to purchase the cheapest teleporter just the day before the congress. It was a building-sized, glossy white structure, appearing like the frame of a non-existent, giant oval mirror. When fuelled by manastone, however, it became similar to the portals that appeared during the horde attacks, the space within the frame turning into a tear in space with thick strokes of neon blue and purple swirling inside. It could only teleport 5000kg of material per day. While this sounded high, when taking into account the mass of people and equipment, this was only enough for fifty people. Clearly, the part of not bringing too large a retinue had not been intended for them since they couldn’t do so even if they wanted to.

As for who was going, aside from Silas, Dom, and Elise, ten of the fifty were mages, most notably Mia, Natalie, and Iris. Thirty more were general fighters, most from the constabulary, with the notable ones being Josh and Lina, the Blazeblade. The remaining seven were select members of the council, chosen to represent other interests from the township. Although Princess Amara’s political experience would have proved invaluable at a congress like this, they could hardly take her considering this was a human congress: who knew how the others would react to a shaerd like her. While Elise was gone, Rolf was to act as the mayor and oversee the remainder of the council.

Interestingly enough, even after news had spread around the township about this congress, the prophet had yet to comment on it. Just when Silas thought the fungal satyr was totally disinterested in it (a fact which shocked him), the prophet paid him a visit on the day they were leaving.

“Do not worry, I will find you there in Brightmoor. Just follow the message I send you, and a meeting between us will be no issue.” He paused and read Silas’s face. “You will be tempted to expose my presence while there, but do not give into it. It is true that Lucian and I have had regrettable interactions in the past and thus sustain an unfavourable relationship, however you should be warned that he is hardly the altruistic hero he will advertise himself as. While it is true that he has invited nearly all figures of note from your race, he will ensure that he maintains complete power over the congress at all times. Case in point, he has not invited Kuraim or Dahlia, the only two who prove a true threat to his position…”