"Colossi Rougewood, (Sequioadendron colossi) and Queen Sequoia, (Sequioadendron reginanteum) are an potion maker’s best friend. Their sap provides a neutral coloured base for health and stamina potions respectively. Also, if possible, the pigment of the Colossi Rougewood can be used to make beauty products for women such as rouge and different shades of lipstick..." -Sylby’s Apothecary Guide for Herbalists and Alchemists.

“Arthur, Arthur…wakey wakey!”

“Hhngh,” Arthur squirmed. “Five more—Oof!” something landed on his stomach, knocking the wind out of him. His eyes flew open to find one very self-satisfied feline lying at his feet as his cloak lay splayed on the grass.

“C’mere you!” He pounced on the grimalkin but for all his speed, he might as well have been moving in slow-motion to the little hexaped . The six-pawed feline scuttled to the back of Nora’s legs. Nora giggled at her little pet’s antics.

“Good morning,” Nora said, sitting beside.

“Mornin’,”' he yawned, flexing his shoulder where the tree bark had impressed on him. It was still dark out but through a gap in the canopy, the sky had begun to transition to the garb of day.

Except for the rescue party from yester-night, there were few people walking up and about. Most had gone to sleep in tents and after a watch had been posted nonetheless, the atmosphere was of pregnant expectation for the state of the missing Wyvern’s Woe adventurers.

The news was not long in coming; the first sign of the returning rescue party was a runner who came tumbling out of the dungeon like a bat from hell.

His loud yells for healers roused every soul in the vicinity and the camp was up in a buzz like a kicked nest of hornets. Stretchers were arrayed in front of the entrance as people waited on tenterhooks. Even Arthur and Nora went to see how the rescue would fare.

They came out of the dungeon carrying a scruffy quartet of adventurers—battered, bruised, bloodied, and that was barely scratching it.

Their faces were sallow while their limbs hang limply; they were barely shuffling even as they held onto their rescuers for support.

The party’s mage was also out cold from mana exhaustion; the shallow rise and fall of his chest was the only thing that marked him as alive.

“They were five!” a disheveled Elena squeaked. She’d just woken up and Halen was right beside, supporting her with his wrist as she quaked from convalescence.

She was trembling despite the layers of covers that weighed her small frame. “Yssinia! —where is she?!” she muttered wringing her hands from the tension of waiting.

As the number of rescuers trickled to a handful; guild master Orhill trudged last carrying a body swaddled in a blanket. Elena’s eyes lit up, Orhill shared a knowing look with her ward and shook his head.

Halen had to hold her back from her frantic protests to get at the body. Then her eyes found Nora and Arthur standing amongst the onlookers.

“You!” she pointed at the duo, extricating herself from Halen’s hold. “I know you revived me; I was far too gone for healing to work,” she ambled towards them while the crowd parted around her. The duo looked on in bafflement as they were suddenly spotlighted.

Elena clung to Nora’s shoulders with a fervent plea in her tearing eyes. Arthur flinched under the weight of the spectator’s appraisal while Nora fidgeted in the woman’s expectant gaze.

The guild master had stopped to witness what would become of the interaction with an inscrutable expression.

Arthur ran options through his mind on the best way to de-escalate the hairy situation, seeing as Elena might keep hounding them.

Trying to appear to be doing something was the only way they could let her down, gently. Arthur met the guild master’s eyes—Orhill seemed to catch the unspoken message.

Throwing them a bone, spoke over the din of susurrations that had arisen. “Let them come.” He said, setting down the swaddle on the ground and Elena released her hold.

While Arthur had decided to humour her, he’d not been prepared for a body locked in death’s icy grip. Before this, he’d never seen a dead body— not even the memory of turning the bandits into gory sand sculptures.

It still gave him nausea when he recalled the moment he’d bloodied his hands—it was self-defense was always his mantra whenever the nightmares from that incident haunted him.

Orhill stood back, holding the protestations of other healers who’d already tried their magic to no avail. Halen held onto Elena because, whatever happened next could sink her deeper into her emotional mire and there was no telling what would happen.

By hand, Arthur led Nora to the body. Kneeling alongside, Nora peeled back the swathes of blankets enwrapping Yssinia’s outline like a newborn.

After the healers had tried— and failed to revive her; they hadn’t declared her death because that was the guild master’s prerogative; they made sure to have someone cleanse away the grime.

Her eyes were closed, delicate lashes still glistening against the morning light as dawn broke over the clearing; her canine ears with tawny tufts lay still, even as minute movements from the zephyrs blowing in the clearing.

From the smile she’d left behind, you would have thought her to be sleeping. But Nora thought otherwise, as she activated her skill, [Detect Death]; an apt skill for her blood healer class even if the skill name was macabre.

With finality, she sighed and looked up to her companion for directions; he was the one who’d intimated this way to appeasement.

Besides, she took in on tacit implication that Arthur did not mean for her to use whichever method she’d used before—it was rather unorthodox and would invite more questions than answers.

She stood up, half tripping as Arthur caught her. Was it an act? Perhaps—Nora had seen death many times but apathy where someone had died and unfamiliar people looked on was ill-advised—she was playing the part of a young sylvani woman.

She gave Elena a weak smile even as her composure began to break and Halen led her away from the crowd.

Arthur's eyes were still locked on the Canis-kin woman.

His first beastkin; his first glimpse of a race with animal features had happened under less auspicious circumstances. He strangled the shudders that threatened to exude shaky exhales as he wrested his gaze away.

‘Damn it' , a deep sense of loss pervaded his thoughts. He blinked his welling eyes before a tear could form; his voice felt raw, and he barely had the mind to tell Nora they had to leave as he feared his voice would break. ’I didn't even know her…”

Intuiting his distress, Nora must have felt it too because she too furtively tugged his sleeve to move. Her eyes were downcast, even the grimalkin mewled sadly. The duo walked away, as the throng parted around them.

They could scant meet their stares from the weight of expectations that'd been saddled on them.

More so, they felt guilty that they didn't even try to get to the rest of the party when they had the time. It ate at them, and both had an implicit consensus that the incident would not leave their lips.

As if cementing the eventuality, the guild master announced that Yssinia Wolfhowl, beloved of Wyvern Woe—since she had no other relations was dead and a moment of silence, punctuated by Elena’s muffled cries, fell over the glade.

The rescue party had saddled their mounts by the time the sun ascended on his skyward journey. They had come and intervened but the case was not cold yet; guild inquisitors would be called to comb the dungeon.

Until then, the area would be cordoned off until it was considered safe for delving. Well, safety was relative— facing danger was already an adventurer’s occupational hazard.

“Mister Arthur, Miss Nora,” Nevine interrupted while they were packing up their tent—the old fashioned way.

The two had decided to keep Arthur’s [Inventory]storage a secret but they’d used his magic knapsack to squirrel away their belongings; the hover board was also magicked away before inquisitive eyes could hone in on the strange contraption.

“That’s us.” Arthur responded in kind. “What can we do for you Mister Nevine?”

“The guild master asked if you were coming along, there’s extra horses you can use,” he peered at the remains of their camp, confirming that the duo was indeed in need of a mount.

“Erm, we walked here,” Arthur replied, scratching his cheek. Nora hid a giggle behind her palm as she got the underlying message—Arthur had never ridden a horse.

“We will be glad to take you up on your offer. My ward didn't get much in the way of horse-riding.”

“What is your relation er—Miss Nora?”

“I’m his handmaid,” she said gleefully. Arthur glared, with a look that said, ‘Really? When did we discuss this?! But Nora tugged him towards the horses and left Nevine’s other questions unanswered.

Away from rubbernecking individuals, “Hey!” Arthur whispered in alarm. “We never talked about this—a handmaid, really? What’s that all about?”

“It would be easy to explain away your ambiguous origins if you just played the part,” Nora said. She handed her furry feline ornament to Arthur while she hummed, scrutinizing the horses before settling on her previous mare.

“If you could just pretend to be a scion of a faraway nobility, it should be easy to buy a house and spend lots of money—which I assumed you’ve been hiding, without raising a few eyebrows.” She tugged at the saddle, satisfied that it would hold two without slipping.

“Even our choice of an unusual pet might be overlooked,” she turned on her heel and looked from beneath Arthur’s gaze with her hands behind her back.

“What passes for ‘normal’ pet’?” Arthur airquoted.

“ If you want to push it? An owlcat might skirt the upper bounds of what is considered normal.” She narrowed her eyes.

“ Now, give this lady a foothold, there is no way I’m getting on that horse with billowing skirts.” She smirked. And that is how Arthur found himself riding double, clinging to Nora’s torso while she steered their mount.

A litany of riding skills enabled the group to reach the Rift separating the Vale from the port overlooking the chasm.

Arthur was wowed by the fleet of aerships taking off or berthing from across his side of the port; only Nora noticed his excited heartbeat as they waited for a barge to ferry their group across.

It would have been unbecoming of him to gawk when he was acting the part of a noble scion.

‘How vexing,’ the corners of his lips crinkled ‘She just did it to spite me.‘ Thank Aeskyre’s etiquette lessons or I’d be a bumbling fool. Noble scion my fat bottoms!’ he pulled at his stuffy collar.

The many foot drop of the rift did not faze him even as the barge, the fantastical equivalent of a cable car suspended by two cables rattled along on its train wheels. It used a series of pulleys to convey the vehicle across the gap while suspended weights on either side were lowered or lifted.

“Fascinating huh?” Nevine asked, as the three of them looked over the chasm to the fogbank and the frothy river below.

“Huh? Oh, yea sure. It really is something.” Arthur caught on.

“The dwarves made it when the port was being built. It took some finagling to have them put it up—”

“Because dwarves hoard their things?”

“ They can be rather tight fisted with their machinery, yes,” He murmured. “I hear they have machines that can work like mills without using water or wind; or even the giant rocks that the barges use.”

“They do?” Arthur feigned interest. ‘Of course they do, I knew that’ but he didn’t voice it.

“It is common knowledge—” he pushed up his foggy glasses.

‘Ah, I know that look. He isn’t going to launch into conspiracy theories is he?’

“—they must have had some association with the Antecessors.”

‘Oops, called it. Antecessors though,I heard that term thrown around. But where? He furrowed his eyebrows. ‘Let's just play along for now.’

“The Antecessors? —” Arthur led him on as he leaned his elbows against the barge’s safety railing.

“Yes, the Antecessors; they were the creators of the dungeons and most of the ruins found all over Alkerdia. I’d wager the dwarves used to associate with them because of their smithing works. That’s why most of them are inventions—and yet they keep the good things to themselves—”

‘You got me in the first half, no need to go tomato there pal’ He thought giving Nora a side-eye and a weak smile that was a plea for help. Fortunately they’d arrived on the other side and Nevine was called away before he could talk off Arthur’s ears.

From the barge exit the procession of riders rode through the early morning cloven and wheeled traffic. Nobody gave them a second glance as they trotted through the street; people were used to seeing adventurers every now and then.

They joined a cobbled street that split off to the barge ways and the port’s main road; Arthur was dismayed they didn't get to linger about. From atop his horse, Arthur had a commanding view of the streets.

Arthur was most interested in the level of technology; from the roads, to the building materials like walls and windows. He was relieved to find a little glass work though it wasn't at the level where every window was glass-paned; impurities and trapped air bubbles were unmistakable.

Most of the buildings had wooden slatted windows for the first floor and while the rest could have either imperfect glass or wooden panes or a mixture of the two.

However the harbour master's tower was a different story altogether. It was an incredible feat of dwarven engineering. Standing at 15 stories, the tower was the sorest thumb sticking out of the earth at the port of Riftedge, or a middle finger depending on who you asked.

Arthur didn't have to start at the over-the-top display of enchanted obsiderite glass. The entirety of the oblate spheroid, akin to a control tower, was a tinted facade of the material. Atop, was a pyramidal construction that Arthur hastily recognized as [Message] relay stele.

How heavy on the coin pouch were they to slap the equivalent of bullet proof glass that allowed night vision on that building?The bottom of the tower ascending to the top though, had ordinary glass, else that would have been rubbing the other building owner's noses in the mud.

Surrounding the building wouldn't have raised a brow on Earth was however, a scaffolded platform. There, three schooners were docked, looking for all the world like a mean trio of hammerhead sharks.

Their bow shapes were a departure from the ship designs around them. The gray studded metal was more of a battering ram than a design eccentricity. Instead of a forepeak slanting upwards where the figurehead would be, there was a horizontal wedge-shaped beam reminiscent of the cephalofoil of a hammerhead shark with the aerships were designed after.

A triplicate of flying jibs, funneled upwards from the jibboom to the fore mast where an emblem of a dwarven flag was displayed for all to see. The mana sail was a deep green so dark it was almost black. Alongside its hull, were stabilizers in the form of fin-sails which had been tucked flush with the aerships while they remain docked

Only the iridescent hues shining off the sail as the light caught the taut material indicated it was anything but. The emblem, was an emblazoned rose gold colour of two oppositely facing but crosses pickaxes and a smithing hammer in the middle of them.

‘The nail that sticks out gets hammered’ was the thought that came unbidden to him. Yet that was not what drew Arthur's eye the most.

What did, were again, three long, back-facing vents on the hull that suddenly hissed out steam; From somewhere along the gunwale, several magical carronades swiveled in unison, a faint heat haze distorting the air around their muzzles.

Even this far out, Arthur could see it. Arthur followed their trajectory. He blinked; lances of magical missiles blasted out with an earth shuddering boom, and promptly decapitated an errant weyr of feral wyverns.

The carronades swiveled back to their emplacement. The towns people didn't even bat an eye as carcasses of wyverns careened from the sky and fell into the rift below.

‘Feck!’ Arthur swore. He didn't even have to pulse [Appraisal] to know that the aerships were heavily shielded against inspection skills.

“Hammerkopv class Battle Schooner,”Nevine supplied as he met his eyes atop his own horse.” Arthur envied the boy, younger than him who looked at ease on his mount.

They were waiting for traffic to let up so their wagon and entourage could pass. The sounds of horses were competing with the din of early morning traffic.

‘Wait, was that German?’ with a v instead of f?’ Arthur caught into the word; however he let the thought stew in his mind as he concentrated on getting as much information from the guild employee. Nevine mistook his raised brow for a prompt to continue.

“The aership that fired a magical fusillade is the Trol'metzger, highest bounty count on [Aer Pirate]s standing at tens of recoveries and the same number of kills.

‘You would fit right in with World of Warships nerds bud.’

“The Sterngucker belongs to the [Port Master]; it's his own private vessel; rarely leaves the port. ” the freckled boy scrunched his brow and nudged his glasses as if recalling some distant memory. Then he added,“Lastly, the Ikaros; the fastest flying contraption south of the Divide. They incorporated steam power into it recently.”

‘Double Fecks!’ Arthur whirled back to the Ikaros, it was the smallest anf most aerodynamic of the three. There was a bulge towards the stern section were retractable paddle-wheels housed behind a grate.

There were two of them. The paddles, reminiscent of a steamboat's on the Thames, had to have been some sort of leather stretched taut over a frame to form an impeller.

There were no masts belching smoke, so he didn't notice. When he thought about it, having mana sails and open fires was a very poor design choice.

However through [Eidetic Memory] Arthur recalled Volemhir's little steam engine that used firestone. At the very least he needn't have worried about global warming.

The dwarves didn't know just how close they came to discovering a corkscrew propeller. That said, they'd advanced from the first blueprints the youth had seen in his days at Sturm’s Keep.

Arthur gulped again, he had to get his project off the ground as soon as possible. And hopefully beat them to a better engine.

But first he'd give them flowers for their aerships; at least before he threw stones at them for their tightfistedness. Arthur felt a crafter's envy bloom in his breast even as the road let up and the group passed through.

Moving on, they passed roads that were also free of refuse and were clearly demarcated from the pavement by V-ditch open drainage channels.There were early morning sweepers and mages snuffing out the magic powered street lights.

A couple of dwarven guardsmen in uniform and chain mail were also patrolling whilst breaking fast on street food— it made him hungry. Arthur had been too caught up to think about getting dinner or supper.

“ We’ll grab something the town over— assuming that’s where we’re going,” Nora said, echoing his sentiments.

“Though, I have to ask; how much do you know about being a maid?”

“It's just like playing pretend,” Nora implied. “It’s not that hard—all I have to do is cook, clean and wash...right?”

“ Whatever works for you…” Arthur snorted amusedly.

After that Arthur spent in silent contemplation the remainder of the journey putting the port of Riftedge behind them.

Thoughts of what he'd seen so far lingered in his mind; the organic magic of the elves who meshed metal and plants without the grotesqueness, the magitech of dungeon; he wondered about who else could tinker with them.

Arthur recalled a certain tiefling artificer saying that it was considered taboo to mess with them because one could lose their will to the sentient constructs.

He was sure someone, or someone's had been spreading the rumors. And if clan Nightcrawler loved their hide, they would keep things under wraps. He was very sure Arkron was prudent in that regard.

Taking the forefront of his ruminations was the view of the ship and their deathly beauty. If that is what dwarves used to police their outposts, take down pirates and make sure their Inventions were not used for war then he would have to work even harder—

Arthur sighed; hadn't even settled down and yet he was already fanning the bellows of his craftsman's spirit.

He needed to relax and so, he shunted all those issues on his mind's backburner and enjoyed the scenery instead. The youth caught Nora's lips crinkle in mirth as she cast her own eyes about their route. The sylvani disguise was holding so far.

Drawing from his meditation that'd become a constant for aura training, he felt his tense shoulders relax from the anxiety he didn't know he’d had.

He exhaled, also putting away his recollections of how many close calls he’d come to and barely escaped by the skin of his teeth.

Eryth was pretty tough and that was a fact for sure. He took a deep breath of the scented woods as they crossed the forest between Riftedge and Aldmoor.

Occasionally a merchant aership would whizz by as they galloped through farmlands of wheat and other golden cereals ripe for bending in the wind. After that, the city of Aldmoor beckoned.

“Hoy there!” a man in guard armor stopped the convoy when it’d reached within range of the main gate. The city was surrounded by tall walls where Arthur could see guards patrolling as they passed by the crenelations.

The early morning traffic here was sparser than he’d expected for a town of its size. Besides a retinue of other guardsmen standing by, there was an eight foot golem that towered over the throng.

Its dome-like head swiveled this way and that as the crystals that made up its eyes scanned the people and their mounts

its stony gaze seemed to linger on them for a moment as it passed over Nora and Arthur. Arthur felt the mana around him fluctuate then wash over him from top to bottom like an airport scanner.

Unlike an airport scanner though, this one made his skin prickle with goosebumps; it reminded him of his first encounter with the dragon though it lacked its intensity.

Seemingly satisfied, the golem flashed its crystals in runic characters at the guardsman who seemed to have been waiting for them.

After referencing something on a piece of parchment, the guardsman's face seemed to be furrowed in thought before he hand-signaled one of his colleagues who took off.

“Guild master Orhill,” the same guardsman saluted as Orhill dismounted his horse and let someone else take the reins.

“We have wounded; Guild business,”

“Ah, is that so?” the guardsman peered at the entourage lingering on Nora and Arthur in their midst.

“And the two, they with you?”

“Yes, will that be a problem? I’ll have you know they were most pivotal to our operation. Let the healers and Wyvern’s Woe pass,”

The guardsman nodded and a group of horses plus a carriage broke away and thundered past the gates. At the same moment in time, another man with a warrior’s gait came out of the guard offices built into the walls.

The livery on his charcoal gray armor distinguished him from the non-descript armors of the others.

One of his pauldrons was fashioned after a grotesque boar-like creature and a golden tasseled badge with the city’s insignia sat on his breastplate. This and the scar that ran past his left eyebrow to his left cheek gave him an imposing presence.

“Guild master Orhill!,” “Guard sergeant Grizzlythorn!,” the two rugged men shared a clasped handshake that sounded like a thunderclap. It even startled the horses and the nearby attending subordinate.

“I hear you got your people back…and then some?” said the bald headed, braid bearded sergeant. His hawk-like stare fell on Arthur and Nora’s duo.

“Uh yes; they were tied in with our rescue. We would have spent a nundinum clawing at a pile of stubborn rocks otherwise.”

“ It was that bad huh?” Grizzlythorn grunted as his braided beard quivered. His subordinate passed him a note eliciting a questioning expression on his countenance which had been stolid until now.

“Sorry old friend, you know the [Guard Captain] will have my hide if I skimp my duties–even people under your patronage are not exempted,” the guard sergeant sighed.

The emotion was so out of place on a large man such as he became at best, his countenance would have been considered stony at best. The man could outright bench press a whole horse with his burliness.

“It’s okay guild master; we can handle this!” Nora yelled from the back as both she and Arthur dismounted from the mare.

The duo made their way towards the two— the combined physical and magical presence around two was suffocating, like standing too close to a furnace— but the duo didn’t flinch.

Nora was Nora and well, Arthur had been in the presence of a dragon, encountered a mimic black widow and lived with all his limbs intact.

They’d both agreed to make a show of it. To send a message that they were no pushovers if their ruse of a noble scion and his maid from faraway lands was going to work.

Arthur thought of the way the story had too many holes like a badly written B list movie. However, if Nora was already a walking lie detector, she could know how to craft a lie so good half the city wouldn’t know to question.

Arthur had unexplained magic, dubious origins and a magical contraption that could tilt Eryth on its poles if the declined [Inventor] class was anything to go by.

‘Ugh, maybe I can flash Volemhir's papers in their face and be done with.’ He thought. Arthur could've used the elf's seal as a vouch of identity but he was playing his cards close to his chest. ‘No, I don't want to use it If I don't have to. Might become an ace someday,’ inner Arthur hemmed and hawed.

That the tiefling camp and Nora hadn’t asked too much about just implied they’d seen stranger things still so—there was that.

Maybe he could pass off his hoverboard as an overly ostentatious shield if he was asked about it but there was no need to go that far for a joke.

And the dungeon shard? That was going to be hard to explain, but hopefully he could plead ignorance if carrying a piece of a monster luring object was taboo.

“Hmph!” the guild master snorted. “Alright son; have at it then. I’ll have Nevine wait out here to escort you in.”

‘Oh no.’ Arthur cringed while Nevine's head swiveled in their direction, positively beaming.

“So,” the guard sergeant prompted gruffly. His voice seemed to reverberate off the rooms walls, “Can you state your name for the record?”

They were in a room made for that exact purpose. The walls whined with anti-scrying and anti-eavesdropping enchantments. There was only a table, two chairs and one lone lux crystal keeping the shadows at bay; there wasn’t a single window to be found.

If that alone wasn’t unnerving, the cold steel chair that froze his behind anchored to the floor gave him the illusion of being in an interrogation room. That and the golem by the door.

“Arthur Sturmdrache.” The truth crystal glowed blue; truth. Blue was the truth while red indicated a lie. The truth detector consisted of a marble sized gem embedded into a circular disk with runes doing magicky things around it like all runes did.

Though the sergeant did not mention that the truth crystal was long past its maintenance date, Arthur knew because all the enchantments in the room were like an open book.

What Arthur didn’t know was that the truth crystal was just there for show; to lull someone into a false sense of security. Sergeant of the Guard Grizzlythorn had his own skill to pick out lies.

[Weight of Lies] made whoever wanted to lie eat their own words; the longer they span the yarn of lies, the more they were likely to get tangled in it and that was how guard sergeant Grizzlythorn would catch liars. Oh, also had [Sense Motive] which helped him pick on criminal intentions too.

“Where is the rest of your house? Do you know where the rest of your kin are?

“I have no idea,” milky blue—a half truth. Of course Arthur wouldn’t know; gaps in his memory and all that. “As far as I know, I’m the only one around.”

The sergeant seemed to regard it as a non-issue, so he carried on with the interview.

“How did you come to be in Alkerd? You don’t even look like a native. Are you from any kingdom in Occidania?”

“To tell you the truth sir? Even I, don't know the specifics. I just came to, in the middle of nowhere one day then I found my maid several weeks later.” Blue. Well, technically it was true, Nora’s encounter with Arthur was weeks later. And the first part of his statement, though ambiguous, still held.

The guard sergeant tensed his shoulders as if about to play ping pong with a Pyr crystal. If the young man’s first statement was to be believed, then he was a mage with a spell to transverse great distances or was a casualty of one.

There were rogue void mages who had been causing havoc on the continent; a bunch of lunatics who meddled with great magics to the detriment of those around them.

Grizzlythorn had it on good authority that some Occidanian kingdom with designs on the continent wanted to destabilize the peace for future conquest.

An invasion from a nearby continent seemed absurd until you remembered there was a land bridge connecting the two. The only reason it wasn’t used was because the moons were rarely in sync enough to pull the ocean that submerged the quasi-isthmus.

Leaning towards his interviewee, he whispered, “Are you a [Void Mage]?”

There was danger in his tone; Arthur blanched but managed to arrest his composure as he shored up his nerve.

“Eh, what’s that?”The truth stone flickered to its dormant milky white state.

“Answer the question. Do you have any knowledge of offensive Locus spells?”

Arthur hesitated. Should he have outed that he had [Inventory]? Technically it wasn’t a spell right and neither was it offensive right? Just a skill…Maybe—

“I… I don’t have knowledge of—” the truth crystal flickered between white and red as both men looked on “—any Locus offensive spell.” milky red.

‘Crumb! I forgot [Flash Step]. I never got around to seeing how it worked. Must be both offensive and defensive—’

“You’re hiding something.” The sergeant’s eyes narrowed ominously. The table creaked under the guard sergeant's gauntlet. [Imposing Presence] made him bigger than he really was as he corralled Arthur into a corner like prey.

Arthur bit his tongue whilst meeting the sergeant’s gaze with his own; flinching away would have been a tell or a misunderstanding. Even as his presence battered at his psyche like gales against a twig, he got the words out;

“I may or may not have had an offensive spell at one point; but I never used it nor learned how it works.”

The sergeant’s bulk relaxed under his armor and his presence was retracted; then slowly as if drawing a weapon with his eyes still on Arthur he took out —a notebook, from one of the many leather pouches on his belt

‘They have notebooks here?! Heh…’

“Name of the spell?”

“[Flash Step],”

“Ah, you should have led with that. That is a skill not a spell.” He relaxed. “Final question then we can get this over with. Do you Arthur Sturmdrache have any insidious designs, politically, economically and religiously against any of the people of Aldmoor or its entities, now or in a probable future were circumstances to turn in your favour when and if certain events occur. And do you swear that if you have any cataclysmic grade artefacts in any form of storage that you do not intend unprovoked violence in any intention or form on the populace?”

“Er, No?” truth stone blinked blue. “Phew,” Arthur exhaled, wiping fictitious sweat from his forehead.

‘That... was like sitting through a random assessment test.’ Inner Arthur quaked, biting his fingernails.

“My thanks for your cooperation.” The sergeant said. Putting away his writing utensils. “Do you have any questions?”

“Yes,” Arthur leaned forward in his chair. “Are Locus spells taboo around here?”

“No, no,” the sergeant waved his hands. “Only void spells are restricted. Never let anyone catch you using one of those.

“Why?”

“Some [Void Mage] lost control of his spell and disappeared a whole village overnight”

“Was he caught?

He deadpanned, “No, he died—were he alive, he’d be sent to the gallows for dabbling in restricted magic.”

“Riiiight,” ‘So there is a difference between spells and skills. I guess Inventory does not count as a spell. But what separates one from the other when all of them look like magic?’ “Don’t I require some sort of identification or?—”

“See that big lug?” the sergeant pointed at the golem standing guard behind him. “He’s got your mana signature down; if you’re a new visitor and he doesn’t have your mana signature down he’ll stop you.

“Oh, interesting…”

“If that is all, you are free to go.” And the golem in front of the steel reinforced door stood aside and let Arthur out.

“How’d yours go?” Arthur asked when he met up with Nora.

“Easy as pie.” Nora chirped as her eyes twinkled with excitement. “Now shall we get our liaison? I want to get a house as soon as possible. I’d kill for good food and a bath.” She closed her eyes, drawing a breath stretching her arms behind her.

“Aah, civilization,” she groaned.

“After living in the dusty Bowl all your life. Never did I think you’d be an enthusiast of baths.”

“Hey! A girl can dream too, you know…” Nora glared at him.

“Right right,” Arthur raised his arms in an entreaty of peace.