Whether he'd expected this or not, though, Karix's words triggered something in Vex — a seed of an idea. He had already found new magic, and if he wanted to, he could show it off right now. He could make his father eat his words. He couldn't deny that it would be satisfying, even; the knowledge that he had a new magic in his hands was enough to give him leverage. Enough leverage to free his brother from the family's traditions, maybe.

He wasn't sure that was enough for him anymore.

There was something else he could do with that knowledge. Something that would mess with both Wisfield and Ashion even more.

And so despite himself, Vex grinned. "Sure," he said.

"Sure... as in yes?" Karix blinked, thrown off by Vex's sudden acceptance. "What?"

"Of course not," Vex scoffed. "Yes to your ultimatum. We'll become nobles. Why not?"

"Vex?" Misa blinked at him. She whispered his name, even though the charm rendered it unnecessary. Vex just smiled at her and signaled that things were fine.

He had a plan.

"I thought you didn't want the Guild involved with the nobility," Henry said, clearly suspicious.

"We don't," Vex said easily. "But let's not talk about that right now. The process is the same, right? A household — or the Guild, in our case — submits a request to the Voting Council, right? Along with proof of work?"

"The process has not changed," Henry acknowledged.

"Great," Vex said. He spoke with a surprising amount of confidence. "Now, moving on to the last item on our list — we want to know what happened to the researchers that came back here."

The rest of the meeting had been frustrating; Henry had been cagey and evasive, until they'd eventually convinced him to tell them what they'd done with those guards and researchers that had gone back to Elyra after the incident.

Which was nothing.

The guards and researchers had gone back to their posts with barely more than a slap of the wrist, if anything, from the way Henry was couching his words, it seemed more likely than not that those researchers were rewarded.

For attacking their boss, because Kestel had been looking out for the delve team under him.

There had been a low thrum of anger through their group; even Rekka, sitting in, looked disgusted. But there was nothing they could do about it, at least not here. Not when their points of contact were the nobles that had created this system to begin with.

But that information would filter back. Just because there was nothing they could do now didn't mean they would do nothing about it forever; it was just another process they had to get started.

Vex left the meeting feeling frustrated, but determined. He wasn't happy with the outcome, exactly, but he was eager to get started on his plan.

"What was all that about?" Misa nudged him as they walked away from the meeting room; the nobles had opted to stay and partake in the food the Guild offered, which was a fairly transparent attempt at using the Guild's resources instead of their own.

"The thing about nobility?" Vex smiled a small smile. "You'll see. I want to go get some food distributed, first. Can't put that off too long, right?"

And so they did.

It didn't take them that long to get back to their caravan and recharge the mana-engine that went into it; it had already recharged mostly from the ambient mana in the city — which, now that Vex was paying attention, seemed a little higher than normal.

"Where to first?" Sev asked, standing at the controls.

"I've got a location," Vex said; he walked over to input their destination into the controls, and the quiet rumble of the caravan slowly took over. Vex almost wanted to speak, but he didn't; instead, he walked over to a seat, and stared out of one of the windows.

He hadn't quite been paying attention before. Elyra had looked the same, and Vex had been distracted by the way they had been treated by the guards, and the absolutely enormous building the Guild had transformed into.

But now he was paying attention to the people, and things didn't look... good.

No one looked like they were starving, exactly, but they were thinner than they should have been. The loud conversations and friendly banter he remembered — the screaming children, even — were gone. People spoke to one another quietly, in whispers; food stores no longer displayed their food out in the open, though they still existed.

When he'd left, the people of Elyra had been... happy, for a given value of happy. There were problems, certainly, but it hadn't been too difficult to live.

Not anymore, it seemed.

It was odd how the smallest things changed a city so much. The quiet was almost disconcerting for Vex, who almost felt the urge to break the silence with chatter, and yet even that seemed disrespectful.

Instead, he remained silent until they reached the first of the merchants that had helped him so long ago, when he'd left Elyra.

The store was old and run-down — a far cry from when he'd last seen it. Once-polished wood gave way to splinters and cracks, and the sign outside the door was dirty and dusty; rust flaked off the once-proud symbol of this small blacksmith, a metal cast of a dagger outlined in silver. Vex was almost worried that the store was closed entirely and permanently, but the warm glow of firelight beyond the door told him otherwise.

"Hello?" Vex called out, pushing the door open; he winced when it creaked at him, signalling his arrival with a high-pitched whine that echoed through the smithy. The shop was filled with its traditional rack of weapons, with a special display for the daggers that were the smith's favorite; even this one, Vex saw, was now mostly empty. He'd once said he'd never sell any of those daggers.

The most important one of them was still there, at least.

"One moment!" A voice called back — Vex didn't recognize it. A man emerged from the back a second later, dusting his hands off on his apron and giving them a tired smile. "Sorry, it's been... well, it's been. Honestly, I can't say it's been busy. Just... trying to keep myself busy. You know how it is." He let out a small laugh, and then when Vex and the others didn't join in, he blinked and looked at them again.

"Oh, shit, you're new to Elyra," he muttered to himself. "Uh, hi! I'm Ingress. Welcome to — Welcome to Dagger Superiority. Um. How can I help you? You're adventurers?"

"Is Victor here?" Vex asked politely, looking around the shop. He didn't see any trace of the man that had helped him.

"Ah." Ingress winced slightly. "He's... not doing very well at the moment. Not able to work. I'm sorry. I assure you, though, I can do anything he can—"

"Is he okay?" Vex interrupted, unable to keep the worry out of his voice, and Ingress paused.

"You knew him?" the young man asked. "Ah, shit, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have broken it to you like that."

"He helped me a while ago," Vex said quietly. "I wanted to see him again. And ask for his help, uh... since he probably has more connections than I do here."

Ingress sighed. "He liked helping people," he said with a small smile, and then at the look Vex gave him, quickly corrected himself. "He likes. Likes helping people."

"He's... not okay, is he?" Vex asked. Sev learned forward, touching his arm, and Vex shook his head, he would not ask Sev to heal another person and strip away another part of himself.

"He's alive," Ingress said. He glanced around and found a chair to collapse into, gesturing to the other four to take a seat, too; a lot of his energy seemed to drain out of him, all in an instant. "Dad's always been a bit too stubborn. Got a touch of rustbite a bit ago, and we didn't have the shards or the gold to get it cured. He just kinda kept working."

"He kept working with rustbite?" Vex asked. "In a smithy?"

"We told him it was stupid," Ingress shrugged. "But... he loves this shop. It's everything to him."

"Those daggers were, too," Vex said, glancing at the half-empty shelf he'd noticed earlier.

"He told you about them, huh?" Ingress's smile was wry. "Yeah. He's the one that sold them, though. Not even for a rustbite cure, can you believe that? He did it because one of our neighbours were starving."

"That sounds like him." Vex hesitated. "Is he... here?"

"He's upstairs, but I don't think you want to see him." Ingress winced. "Rustbite..."

"It's not pretty, I know," Vex said quietly. "But he helped me out when I needed it; I feel like I should see him... No, you're not coming with me, Sev."

"But I can—"

"Sev." This time it was Misa that spoke; she put her hand on his shoulder and shook her head. The charm saved Ingress from having to hear what they were saying. "Just... spare yourself. Late-stage rustbite can't be healed, and if you do it, you're going to take an even bigger hit than you did from healing Lendel."

Misa was right, of course.

Vex headed up the stairs with Derivan while Sev tried to argue with Misa — argued and argued poorly, in fact; he knew she was right, too. If Vex had to guess, Sev felt it was necessary to at least see who he was refusing to heal; to remember them, and carry them with him, because it was someone he could have saved.

It was a noble thought.

Noble, but not at all healthy.

The steps up to upper floors of the smithy were remarkably clean, compared to the exterior of the building and even compared to the shop; there wasn't much to the upper floors. Two doors leading to two bedrooms, and a living room of some sort in the back. Vex didn't bother looking. He could spell the tangy, metallic smell of rustbite practically radiating from one of the rooms.

"Rustbite's a degenerative malus," Vex said quietly to Derivan, just before he opened the door; he knew the armor was curious, and he needed something to break the silence and distract himself. Derivan was probably staying quiet to stay respectful. "It's metal accumulation, basically. The name's not entirely accurate. You get clumps of metal building up in your body, and eventually it starts to grow out of it."

"That sounds... unpleasant." Derivan paused. "Should I be coming in with you?"

"He's most likely too far gone for it to matter," Vex said quietly. "The way Ingress was talking about it, I can't imagine it would. But your metal won't have a big effect on him, either way, as long as you don't touch him directly."

He pushed open the door.

There was a cruelty in rustbite, in that it was a magical disease that produced results that were grosteque and picturesque, all at once; the small filaments forming a minuature forest would have been beautiful had it not been growing on an old man's body. Vex barely recognized Victor beneath it all, and he had to suppress the urge to flinch away; instead, he approached Victor slowly.

"I'm sorry this happened to you," he said. The words felt wholly inadequate. "And thank you for what you did for me."

He wished there was a way to know Victor heard him, underneath it all. There was the slow shift of his chest as he breathed; that was the terrible interaction between rustbite and health. Unlike a lot of degenerative maluses, rustbite didn't cause a reduction in health; if anything, it increased your health. It was strange. But the metal that grew was a physical impediment, and as the malus progressed, victims lost the use of their limbs.

There was a case here to be made for a merciful death; many of those with rustbite would choose that option, if they didn't have the means to cure it. But Victor...

"Oh, I'm never gonna die." The old man grinned at a younger Vex, handing him the materials he'd requested; manaforged metal shaped like a dagger, and manashaped wood for the hilt. "Trust me. Come back whenever, and you'll find me."

"That seems..." Vex tried to find the words. It was a little arrogant? But he couldn't just say that.

"I just don't ever want to die." Victor seemed quite firm about it, too. "No matter what happens. I wanna stick around to see what the world becomes, ya know? As long as there's a chance I can keep going, I'm gonna."

Victor wouldn't have gone for a merciful death.

"I wonder," Derivan said softly. "If there is a way to truly speak with him."

Vex glanced at him. "[Telepathy] doesn't work," he said. "Rustbite eats into the parts of the brain that understand language."

Derivan traced a shape in the air in response; the looping letters of Communication. Vex stared at it for a moment, and then at Victor.

Sev had the ability to heal. Vex hadn't considered that he might be able to do something, because that had never been his role, but this... this was a start?

This was what he wanted to do anyway.

"Maybe we can," he agreed.