The Greatest Archmage To Have Ever Lived [OP MC, LitRPG]

The Quiet Lamb was an inn in a outer parts of Orlys, which name was, as far as Sael could tell, its only aspirational quality.

The building listed slightly to the left, as though it had started the century with good posture and gradually given up. The wood along the front was the particular shade of grey that meant it hadn't been treated in years — possibly decades — and the steps leading to the door had that sunken quality of planks that had been stepped on by too many people and maintained by nobody. A sign hung above the entrance, hand-painted, showing a lamb that looked less quiet than vaguely resigned. Someone had nailed a sprig of dried lavender to the doorframe, and sadly, it was not really helping.

Sael stood at the bottom of the steps. Margaret stood beside him, hands folded, expression pleasant and completely unreadable. Edric and his family occupied the landing above, framed by the doorway of the establishment where they were apparently living for the foreseeable future.

Mira was staring at him. She had not stopped staring at him for approximately three hours, and there was no indication this was going to change. Jonn was doing a version of the same thing, though his came with a jaw he kept having to remind himself to close.

Edric cleared his throat. "So," he said. He glanced behind him at the inn, then back. "This is... us."

He gestured at the building with one hand, a broad, slightly helpless motion, and because Sael was no stranger to this game, he knew the man couldn't think of what else to do with the moment.

"Hmm," Sael simply said.

Which meant he was glad they'd arrived. It also meant that he too, had no idea what to say next, which had been a growing problem all evening.

Three hours had passed since the Jade Emperor clapped him on the arm and walked back through the crowd with his entourage. Also three hours since every person on that street — and a number of people who had not been on that street but who had heard the sky-voice from adjacent ones — collectively decided that Sael was not going to be allowed to leave quietly.

The first two of those hours were the problem.

What had happened was this: the Emperor departed, and for maybe ten seconds the street held its breath. Then it didn't, and Sael found himself standing at the center of something that could accurately be described as a swarm. They came from the shops, from the alleys, from around corners as if summoned.

The journalists — there had been two, and then six, and then Sael stopped counting — kept asking questions he couldn't answer quickly enough before the next one landed. A boy no older than fourteen had somehow gotten hold of a piece of parchment and was pushing it toward him with both hands, asking him to sign it, and behind that boy, another one. Behind her, three more people. It went on, and on, and on.

At several points during the ordeal, Sael considered his options. He could fly away or even turn invisible, both of these options passed through his mind but... the people were so earnest about it.

That was the problem. Half of them claimed to have traveled days to get here, closing shops and leaving families behind on the strength of a rumour. The other half looked like they'd simply been walking past and decided that this was their life now. They gripped his hands, pressed gifts into his arms, wept openly, and told him things about their grandmothers. A few dropped to their knees on the cobblestone, which Sael found deeply uncomfortable and never got faster at stopping.

So he stayed. It seemed rude not to.

Through all of it, Edric's family had been pressed to the margins, watching. And Margaret had stood at Sael's back patiently. The city guard eventually came and cleared a path. This was appreciated and also approximately two hours late.

The third hour was the walk.

It should have taken twenty minutes. Sael had offered to accompany the family to their lodgings, partly because he still owed them a meal together and partly because it seemed like the decent thing to do after the afternoon they'd all just shared. So the six of them set off through the side streets of Orlys as the sun dropped lower and the tournament banners overhead caught the last of the light.

And the walk was quiet. Though... not fully quiet. Little Mira talked enough for everyone, an unbroken narration of thoughts and observations directed mostly at Sael's kneecaps, since that was the part of him nearest to her eye level. Jonn asked two questions, both about magic, and both carefully worded. They were good questions, actually.

But Edric and Mara had changed. It wasn't really anything you could point to and name, but the easy warmth from the street, the dinner invitation, the "no rush" and the handshake, all of that had pulled back behind something more measured. They called him "Lord" twice.

Mara started a sentence at one point, stopped, and restarted it with different words, as though the original version hadn't been respectful enough and her husband walked with his hands clasped behind his back, which Sael had not seen him do before and which looked profoundly unnatural on a man who talked with his whole body.

They were being careful with him now. That was the only way Sael could describe it, and he understood that, in principle. He just didn't know what to do about it, because the harder he tried to act normal, the more aware he became that he was trying, which made him stiff, which made them stiffer, which made him stiffer, and so on, in a tightening spiral that nobody seemed able to break.

Margaret, for her part, had spent the entire walk a half-step behind him, observing the whole thing with a satisfied smile on her face.

Now they were here. At The Quiet Lamb. In the fading light. With nothing left to walk toward and no obvious way to end the evening.

Sael looked at the inn again.

"It looks," he said, and then paused, because the honest version of this sentence was going to be unkind, "...a bit small."

Something in Edric shifted. His shoulders dropped — just a fraction — and his hands unclasped. It seemed he was glad to have a topic he knew what to do with.

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"It is," he said, and there was actual relief in his voice, enough that Sael could hear it. "Every lodging house in the city's been booked for weeks. We tried four before we found this one, and it was the last room they had. Up in the attic." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Can't stand up straight near the walls. Jonn's on a bedroll between the beds, and Mira kicked him off it the first night, so now he's on the floor proper, which he won't let us forget."

"It was my bedroll," Jonn said.

"It was on my side," Mira said.

"There are no sides. It's an attic."

"Everything near my bed is my side."

Edric let that go as he sighed, visibly used to this kind of exchanges. "Point is, it's tight. But it does the job." He rubbed the back of his neck, that same gesture from the street, Sael noticed, the one that came out when he was circling something he didn't quite know how to land. "We didn't come for the lodging, anyway. We came because of the tournament. Well, because of the rumours, really. About..."

He looked at Sael, and the sentence didn't finish.

"About you," Mara said.

She was standing just behind Edric, one hand on Mira's shoulder.

"There were stories, even in Gatsby. People saying Sael the Great had returned, that he'd been seen. We didn't put much stock in them, but the children kept asking, and..." She glanced at Edric, who gave a small nod, and she looked back at Sael. "We thought, even if it wasn't true, the tournament would be worth the trip. And if it was true, well." A pause. "We never thought we'd actually meet you. Let alone that we already had."

Edric laughed. It short, a little thin, and cut off at the end like he wasn't sure he still had permission.

Sael fiddled with his pipe. He turned it over in his fingers, not lighting it, just holding it, the way he did when he was thinking and wanted something to do with his hands.

They'd traveled here on a rumour, packed their children, left Gatsby, found the worst inn in Orlys, crammed into an attic room where nobody could stand up straight, and stayed... because of him. He wasn't sure what to do with that.

"Mister, it was you, wasn't it? You fought the dragon," Mira said.

Sael looked down. She was holding the pendant at her throat with her whole fist like a precious, fragile thing.

"In Gatsby," she continued. "Mother said a powerful mage stopped the necro dragon. Everyone said so. That was you."

It wasn't a question.

"I dealt with it, yes."

Mira nodded once, as if confirming it to herself when suddenly, the door of The Quiet Lamb creaked open, and a stout old woman with flour on her sleeves stepped out, squinting into the fading crowd like someone inspecting damage after a storm and her gaze passed over Sael, Edric's family, and landed on Margaret.