Luke flexed his hand, relishing the feeling of being able to willfully manipulate all his digits again. Though it wasn’t anywhere close to full health, it was leagues better than when he’d just woken up. He'd been out of commission for the better part of 6 months, so it was understandable he'd grown tired of the inactivity.

Though his full incapacitation had only lasted for 3 months, it was already too late to change the narrative by the time he’d woken up. In the 3 months following the event now dubbed ‘The Hatchery Incident’, the Adherents of Radiance had managed to grab the narrative by all the important bits, bending it to their will and with it, public opinion on their order.

He’d woken up to the whispers of the order’s greatness, and by listening attentively, he’d managed to piece up a blurry picture of the story floating around, or at least with regards to the order's conduct. Details pertaining to his involvement in the incident were either left vague, or entirely skipped, and this worried him. Within a month of waking up, he’d recovered well enough to move around, albeit only when aided by a cane, and at a snail’s pacing at that. But haste hadn’t been the focus though, he’d just needed a means to move around in order to obtain more information.

As he'd hobbled through the streets, he couldn’t help but notice the awkward stares levied his way. Most of the times they held shock or surprise, which wouldn’t be unusual given his long absence due to injury; but other times they bordered on disproving, malicious even. The latter initially did not make sense, for he and the band had always done right by the residents of Ramztonn, but after further consideration, he wondered if Johnny had brought Iskar’s tale back to the rest of the townsfolk.

He'd spotted two ladies in an animated conversation. They stood next to a fruit cart 10 meters away and though he couldn’t quite read what they were saying, he was obviously the subject of their conversation by the pointed stares that occasionally strayed his way. He been much in the way of lip-reading but given the nagging urge to understand what they were saying, he'd tried anyway.

[Prompt-less Appraisal] has kicked in. Examining the content of [whispered conversation] …

Ah, that fickle ability again, Luke had thought, as the system prompt informed him of its activation. It always brought valuable information with its activation, shedding additional light on whatever was the subject of its invocation. It was an ability whose value was only equaled by its randomness, activating whenever it willed.

He’d been pleasantly surprised the first time it had activated, immediately dropping the contents of its activation to try and find out more about the ability. To his surprise, it hadn’t been listed in his usual interface. He’d almost dropped the issue when he thought about the weird notification he’d received right before things turned to poop in that lair. Alerts was it, he’d thought, and his alerts had popped up in response to that. He’d perused the rest of the interface updates, eventually arriving at a description of this new skill.

He'd initially read the name as ‘prompt-less’, as was written, immediately looking around his recuperation room / 'prison cell’ to see what gems the skill would provide. He’d failed to receive a single notification for all his efforts and assumed it a case of a long cool-down between invocations. He’d moved his experimentation to the next day, only to be met with the same result.

A few days later, he’d been surprised by another invocation, immediately comparing the difference in conditions between this successful invocation, and his experiments. Though the successful invocations seemed completely random, he’d been actively inspecting an object, wondering about additional details that weren’t immediately apparent. Following that trek of thought, because he’d wanted more information, the skill had obliged his request.

Since he hadn’t issued a command for the skill, it had been unprompted in a sense; but it had been prompted in a sense as well, with intent as the prompt in place of a full command. From this he figured ‘prompt-less’ had actually been “prompt - less”. He’d gained a point in wisdom for his troubles, and with additional use over time, the skill had eventually progressed towards being ‘occasionally promptless’.

In addition to intent-based invocation, it now also activated when it willed, especially in situations he hadn’t thought to apply it in, with eves-dropping as a prime and active example.

“-is up again,” came the first voice as his spell picked up the ladies’ conversation in the middle.

“Yes, he should’ve stayed down longer, or even for good!” came the second, with a little venom behind the words.

“Don’t be like that, Stella. You know he’s always been good to us regular folk, and our wayward kids too,” soothed the first.

“Yes, but past rights don’t make up for current wrongs, he’s become trouble. You wouldn’t want what happened to poor Jimmy to happen to your sweet Matthew would you, Marta?” Stella responded, not moved by her friend’s words in Luke’s defense.

“Come now, would you change your opinion of him based on heresy, and from that shady order no less?” Marta asked, still unmoved by Stella’s attempt at using her last born to sway her opinion. “They’ve never paid much attention to our poor town, and Luke’s band is all that’s defended our town till now. Where were they when the Fyre nation attacked? Or when the bandits banded? Or when it rained cats and dogs? Or how about that time-”

“I get it, I get it!” Stella interrupted, cutting off the list of raid events Luke’s band had taken point on. “They have been useful, and I acknowledge it was in no small part thanks to that child’s convictions, but now those same convictions are what has brought tragedy to our peaceful town. You didn’t see Jimmy’s body, Marta. He was char-grilled, extra crisp, with his face the only callback to when he’d been alive and recognizable as human”.

“And have you ever thought on why that order had to send him back like that?” Marta asked. That seemed to have cooled her friend’s passion. Seeing her chance, Marta built on that point, expressing what she’d long suspected.

“Why did they have to present his body to his family like that? If they could restore his face, could they not have restored his body as well? Those self-righteous adherents were definitely up to something, zealots always are!” Marta finished. Something she said must have fanned her friend’s passions, for they flared back up with a vengeance.

“An authority on magic, are you now?” she retorted, her tone and volume betraying her hurt. “Maybe they thought it prudent to present the corpse in a better fashion, recognizable to his family who might deny the reality of his demise; and being short on magic, they chose to limit the restoration to his face. He was dead after all, what good would it be to waste power on what could be hidden beneath his funeral robes?” Stella answered.

“Come on Stella, you don’t have to be so caustic in their defense,” Marta admonished, before getting back on point, “it would’ve only been visual, after all, and the magic requirements wouldn’t-”

Stella cut her off with a glare, directing her gaze to the left. Marta was confused for a second. She followed her friend’s pointed gaze towards a figure too young to need a cane. Though he’d been the catalyst for their conversation, Marta had thought the boy long gone, but there he stood, with a blank, if not distant, expression.

“He’s still ther-” she began, being cut off for the second time in a minute, this time verbally.

“Shush dear! I think he can hear us!” whispered Stella.

“All the way from there?” Marta asked, incredulous at her friend’s paranoia.

“Well, stick around if you want to find out, I have chores that suddenly need doing!” she said, the last words clipping in the woman’s rush to escape.

Marta shook her head at her paranoid friend before turning back to where Luke had been standing but the boy was no longer there. With nothing else to do, she bought her fruit and made her way back home.

◆◆◆

Luke had gotten back on track the moment that old biddy had noticed him. It hurt that people he’d assisted could change their tone that fast without hearing his side of the story, but it was good to know there were those who’d still stand by his character, like that other lady, Marta. From their conversation, all the blame for Jimmy’s demise had been thrown sorely onto their band’s shoulders. He couldn’t be sure how all this had affected the rest of the band, but he intended on finding out, sooner, rather than later.

He'd looked around as he made his way to his destination, noting whoever took too much of an interest in him, directing his newly discovered appraisal functionality on them for evesdro-, ‘information gathering’. Nothing was forthcoming except a few insults here and there, and from the way one of them had dared call him useless, he could surmise the general population already knew of the condition with his {WIND} affinity.

Seeking a quicker information dump, he’d made his way to the town’s main tavern, the Squeaky Wheel, limiting his activities to walking in and out. This had been enough to rouse conversation, and he’d managed to appraise John Forester’s table before leaving, establishing a line for his reconnaissance. The man hadn’t even waited for Luke to exit the confines of the tavern before mouthing off on how the mighty had been brought low.

What had followed, although disheartening, was exactly what Luke had hoped for. He’d taken note of all the threads on one mental page and when the collection phase was done, he’d spent some time splitting the notes into two summaries, one focused on the Adherents of Radiance, and the other on the fallout from the incident. “Summarize,” he’d mentally commanded, receiving the ordered summaries almost instantaneously.

[Summarize] has been invoked on . Summarizing… Displaying results of [Summarize]: Category One: Adherents of Radiance Category Two: Fallout

Leaving the worst for last, he’d selected the Adherents’ notes and prompted for the display. They came in chronological bullet points that made it easier to see what the Order had been going for. According to the Adherents, their order had flagged Zuck as a potential heretic with a yet-to-be-known hidden class. His class hadn’t been the issue, given how even they had to respect an initiate’s right to privacy; but his research matter had been another matter entirely.

Due to their suspicions, and the suspect’s refusal to cooperate with a formal inquiry into his subject matter, the Order had seen it fit to pay him a visit at his place of research. This would be unannounced, lest he move to hide any untoward research details. The Order had gone with the intention of keeping everything civil, and to that end they’d enlisted the help of a local band who were to act as mediators between Zuck and the Order.

Things had gotten ahead of them however as Zuck had immediately turned hostile, forcing the band and the single Order combatant to act in their own defense. The order combatant had been limited in his arsenal due to the presence of lower ranked friendlies. He’d gotten his chance to take charge once the band had been all but defeated and while he was locked in a tense equilibrium with Zuck, the local band leader saw his opportunity to act.

Though they assume his actions came from good intentions, the outcome had been anything but. The enthused leader had failed to take into consideration spell interference, and the result of his negligence had been a chaotic shockwave of mixed spell effects, an effect bomb. Fortunately, the resulting shockwave would be strongest at the point of origin. An affinity backlash was a biproduct of the detonation process, and this would travel along the spell conduits still connected to the effect bomb at the time of detonation.

Zuck had caught the brunt of the attack, receiving a double whammy from the shockwave and affinity backlash; but a few of the other band members had been caught in the residual shockwave as well, chief of them the one casualty. The band leader had failed to detach from the effect bomb in time, effectively burning out his channels.

So, Luke had thought, it seems they left out the fact they masqueraded this mission as a monster raid to our band. They also left out what their other members were doing while we were engaged in battle, and how the rewards were distributed afterwards.

The points he listed weren’t close to a total of what the order had changed, but he’d taken exception to those 3 the most. At the thought of rewards, he'd remembered the egg Zuck had entrusted him with. He hadn’t managed to store it in his inventory before getting knocked out by Johnny, which meant it had probably been added for tallying in the rewards.

Displaying

The fallout had fewer bullet points, but each point’s revelations packed quite the punch. They started with Jimmy’s death and Luke’s incapacitation, followed by the rewards their band had received. Due to Luke’s misstep with the effect bomb, it had been decided that a portion of his share would go to the deceased’s family, whilst everything else, save for the egg that had been in his possession; would go to the rest of the band.

The order had claimed the egg for ‘safety reasons’, offering to make up for the perceived loss by starting a new chapter in Rammzton. As a result of the goodwill the band had earned with their participation, the members would be offered tutelage at no cost for the next 5 years, as well as first crack at all the missions proximal to Rammzton, as long as they met the minimum requirements.

Lance had taken over as band leader and assigned Brig as his second. Johnny had moved up to Brig’s former position, making that the new hierarchy of leadership. That hadn’t been surprising, given their previous ranks in the band, but the next part left Luke speechless.

Upon the establishment of the new Adherents of Radiance chapter in Rammzton, their band had rebranded from simply being known as ‘The Band’, to ‘The Lance of Radiance’. This seemed to serve two purposes, to highlight Lance’s take over as the leader, as well as to signify their alliance with the Adherents of Radiance. The former he cared less for, though he thought it low for Lance to include his own name in there; but the latter he couldn’t abide. How could they align with the very cause of this mess?

He would’ve had a word with Lance and the other band members had it not been for the next point. The Lance of Radiance had formerly cut ties with Luke. This came as quite the shock, seeing as he had been the one to start the band in the first place. He’d stood by them as they grew in strength together, but the moment he was down, they’d taken the opportunity to oust him from the band.

Still reeling from the shock of the last point, he’d moved onto the next, which referred to his family’s property in the town. The house and all its contents had been taken as compensation for the incident’s fallout by the council. A portion had gone to Jimmy’s parents, whilst the rest went into the town coffers to ‘provide adequate schooling in order to prevent other magical mishaps in future’.

As for his funds held in the local bank, those would be used in caring for Luke until he was fully recovered, at which point he would be banished from the town and banned from returning for the next five years. As a parting gift, he would receive a quarter of the remaining amount to fund his departure from the town.

It seemed the order and the town council had come to an understanding. They would force Luke out of the town before he could dispute any of the points floating around about the incident. Someone in the council had also put their own twist on the matter, aiming to milk him for all he was worth before his banishment. This could be seen in the way they’d included his personal funds in the mix, and by mentioning something as arbitrary as ‘until he was fully recovered’. They could exaggerate the expenses or detain him there as long as they could.

With the deck skewed to his detriment, he chose flight over fight. He would make his exit before he could be formerly dismissed. He would lose the quarter of the remaining amount he was owed this way, but this would work to his favor. No one would anticipate his departure if he didn’t make it known in advance.