Ch. 2.11 | Getting Acquainted
PoV: Lania
Lania sat at one or the tables—notably, not the one Esmat had poured their blood out onto. A ceramic cup of goat blood sat before her, her third helping, after she had eagerly downed the other two. The taste left something to be desired. Although, it did satiate Lania a little bit, so she really couldn't complain. It was fine as long as she did not have to puncture any human.
“Yeah,” Of-Jinan started, sitting on the opposite side of the table from Lania. “You were a human before this. I'm hoping that turning into a vampire won't lose that. You're essentially a risky investment . . .”
Lania snorted. “‘Investment.’”
“I just want to help people, including all the weird ones. You have a place here,” Of-Jinan said.
“Are we forgetting the part where she murdered half a town?” Sanya stood off to the side, arms folded.
“No,” Of-Jinan groaned, then rubbed her forehead with both hands. “She won't do that again . . . and . . . you're right. It's hard to justify. All that currency sent will not bring those people back. Are we forgetting the part where you killed . . . who was it? Thamina?”
Sanya winced. “T-that’s different. That was one bully. Lania murdered half a—”
That was an old rumor. It was interesting to hear it from Sanya and someone else. Thus, it was true. Lania did not know what to think about it. She supposed she could not judge murder after what she had done. This whole thing was messed up.
“I know!” Of-Jinan cut in. “What would you have me do?”
Sanya’s gaze fell upon Lania, squinting judgment. Lania squirmed and shrunk in her seat. Sanya was the strongest mage—or one of them, and Lania was not on her good side. Sanya was cool, but also cold, and kind of mean. How did Mai put up with her? Lania must be missing the exposure of Sanya in some part.
Sanya sighed.
“With that out of the way,” Of-Jinan said. “By accounts, you have skills, Lania. You could be useful against monsters and political opponents alike.”
“What if I didn't want to do either?” Lania asked. “Hypothetically.”
Lania did want to be useful to Of-Jinan and Sanya. They were, of course, her idols. They were strong, cool, and awesome! She finally got to meet them, and she wanted to be praised and—
This was unhealthy, wasn't it? . . .
Of-Jinan opened her mouth to speak, but a blur of movement cascaded down the stairs and blinked its way over to the table.
The Temporal bubble fell, and Nadiyya stood there, leaning in towards Of-Jinan, both her hands on the table. Her hand of talons chipped into the stone underneath them.
“M—eow birds have found them! Who—should grrrr—o?”
“You know, and you have Temporal magic, so, can you? Easier than a pet of yours leading someone there.”
Nadiyya frowned, but then lit up. “Yes! I'll bring them back to you like a housecat with a mouse!” She winked at Lania . . . for some reason. Some heat did rush through Lania's face . . . hmph.
Nadiyya tossed up a time bubble, turning into a blur and then vanishing entirely.
A pit formed in Lania's stomach for two reasons. One:
“Aw, I want magic,” Lania muttered.
The second being . . . Lania wanted Nadiyya to be back here already. It was sad to see her go . . . Um.
Of-Jinan nodded in satisfaction. “A vampire with a class could be interesting indeed. We'll show you the grimoires later, though most are out for study, putting them to use.”
Lania grinned. “Really! Yay!”
“Then there is the answer to your hypothetical. Join the guild, and learn magic in return . . . and food, and a bed . . . Do you have family?”
“Yes, do you think I'll be able to see them?”
“You're not Calderan, are you?”
Lania shook her head. “New Kanimaw.”
“Ah. Maybe I can arrange to get them moved, if that's okay.”
“No—I am kind of scared for them to see me like this,” Lania gestured to herself.
“That is . . . fair.” Aisha glanced around the room. “I suppose that is all. Any questions? I'll get your room set up soon.”
“Uhm . . . No questions? Where is the room?”
“That depends. Do you want a room upstairs or elsewhere? Like a house?”
“I get to choose?”
Aisha shrugged.
“Where does everyone else live?”
“Nadiyya is the only one in the hall, currently. Although I should probably kick her out . . . she scares some groups away—upstairs functions as an inn.”
“Poor Nadiyya.”
Aisha nodded. “I have a house—with Fazl. Esmat and Zahira, likewise, have their own. Sanya and Mai live outside the hall, though separate.”
“Isn't it time we share a building?” Mai whispered to Sanya.
“Huh,” Lania gasped. “I never would have thought things to be this way—you and Fazl, nor Esmat and Zahira, I suppose both make sense on inspection . . . then Sanya and Mai not sharing, that one perplexes me.”
“We're not,” Aisha replied quickly.
“You wound me,” Of-Salama still floated by the quest board. He didn't actually sound offended or hurt.
“Get a room and convince Nadiyya to move in with you,” Sanya suggested.
“W-what?” Lania liked that idea. It definitely showed on her skin.
“I've seen the way you two have looked at each other.”
. . . Lania opened her mouth to speak, but did not actually know which words to say. She shut her mouth and remained silent.
“Enjoy the blood,” Of-Jinan pushed herself up from her seat and stepped over to Sanya.
“Thhh . . . anks?”
Of-Salama floated over to the counter. “Hey, Rusul!”
This whole ordeal wasn't too secret to the guild, it seemed. Rusul stepped out from the kitchen. “Yes?”
“Can I get some of that goat—the goat, not the blood, of course,” Of-Salama flashed Rusul a smile.
“That won't be ready until dinner.”
“Oh. Something else then?”
“Sure, what'd'ya want?”
“You have that thing from the north? The . . . the bird?”
“Chicken?” Rusul replied flatly. “Of course not.” That was a common bird up north, beyond the old influence of the tempest. The southern city-states like Calderae had been given some as a gift. Some to eat, others to raise. It would take a while for them to circulate, even into places with more resources, like the illustrious guild owned by the founder governor of Calderae.
“Oh. Do you have . . . other goat?”
“Obviously, why didn't you ask earlier? What kind of goat?”
Lania rolled her eyes and tuned them out.
“We still need to discuss the matters of the red portal, and the monster,” Of-Jinan spoke to Sanya and Mai.
“Right. There's so little we know, though,” Sanya said. “What is the monster like? Where is it? Is this a slay quest or something else? What is beyond the portal?”
Lania was right here. What did they need from Nadiyya that they couldn't get from Lania?
“Nadiyya should know more about the monster. She had a bird keeping an eye on it,” Mai pitched in.
Of-Jinan nodded. “We'll wait for her then . . . She does way too much for us.”
Oh, it seemed the location of the monster was the important point.
“Do you want me to close the portal or head inside first?” Sanya asked.
“I want it to be explored. Being a new color and all. Who knows if [Terminate Portal] will work?”
“It should.”
“Lania, you were on that team, yeah? Thoughts?” Of-Jinan turned towards her.
Lania had heard about [Terminate Portal] before. Adventurer teams would often have or call for a Spatial mage at some point, to close off a purple portal to the Abyss. The alternative was rushing inside and finding some sort of node and breaking it. Spatial mages were spread thin, so sometimes this was the option to cut off monsters by the source.
Portals of different colors offered a whole host of questions. Were they Spatial magic in nature, and would a Spatial spell work to close them? Who or what opened these new portals? What did it imply? Those were questions that Lania's research team was going to answer.
“N-no. I don't know. I did not bring the research back with me,” Lania answered. She had just been an assistant—a scribe. She would copy the words but not really understand them or commit them to memory. They hadn't gotten very far before they had been attacked, anyway.
“Maybe it's still by the red portal.”
“There was a storm westward, it could have been lost or damaged in the rain and wind.”
“Hmm.”
Lania tried remembering what had been said. “The . . . leylines were weak? Or the boundaries between worlds? It could have been a natural creation due to structural weakness.”
“Sanya, do you think someone could have summoned these?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe ask the librarian?”
Of-Jinan snorted. “Not even Heliux knows where she is right now.”
“A shame that she disappeared with the Spatial grimoire, too,” Zahira muttered.
“When do you want us at the portal? Is it even a priority right now, considering Zulfaqar?”
“You're not my—our—only mages.”
“Right. So is the portal high priority enough? Should you send us against Zulfaqar and—”
“Is diplomacy still on the table?” Mai asked.
“Heliux, no,” Zahira jumped in. “Esmat got stabbed.”
“Esmat was an assassin. Very sneaky. Very outside diplomacy. If I recall, it was to kill a legislator loyal to Zulfaqar,” Sanya said. Well, there was confirmation that Esmat was the assassin. Ooh! Lania was learning so many probably-top-secret things about the guild recently! Wait, why were they trusting her presence?
Of-Jinan sighed. “We can give diplomacy some more time. The last thing I want is my people getting killed in a war. If it becomes bad enough, I'll send for you. Your assignment is the red portal.”
“And speaking of portals, how is the black one?” Sanya asked.
“It's terrible,” Of-Salama admitted. “It emits an aura of death. You can't get close. Luckily it's far from any civilization.”
“And the lich?”
“Weirdly enough, it went back beyond. There's skeleton rats and the like still poking around though.”
This was the first time Lania was hearing about a black portal. Even that blue one came as a bit of a surprise. The red one was far from the only portal oddity occurring recently.
“There's a chance ‘Mother’ went back into her realm . . .” Lania muttered.
“What was that?” Of-Jinan asked.
Lania blushed, fidgeting with her hands, cup of goat blood empty. “The monster. We met in a village it had massacred. It . . . turned into a beautiful lady and called itself m-my mother. It wanted to return to its realm. O-overall, the monster was kind-of pathetic . . . I almost pitied it.”
“Here's a thought—what if we established diplomatic relations with this portal? They communicated with Lania,” Of-Salama suggested. He now occupied a seat, a plate of goat meat in front of him. Lania spotted tomatoes, eggplant, and potatoes thrown around it, too. It was more complicated than that, but so much less interesting than blood, so she didn't stare for long.
Oh, would she not find normal food appetizing anymore?
“Hey, did we forget the part where a village was massacred again?” Sanya asked. “Why is everyone forgetting that? I didn't realize I was working with villains.”
Mai laughed.
Lania didn't think that was supposed to be a joke.
Something thumped against the table, off to Lania's left, towards the guild hall entrance. She jumped in her seat.
All attention in the room turned towards the source.
A body lay sprawled across the table, stomach and face down, incapacitated and bleeding. A triumphant Nadiyya grinned, sitting on the table cross-legged, breathing ragged.
Lania did not think that she would ever get used to Temporal magic . . . The way that Nadiyya blurred, appeared, or disappeared instantaneously was so . . . jarring? But it was also magical. Lania could not help but think along the lines of “go Nadiyya!” whenever she displayed a magical feat, on top of that. Why?
“I got him!” She chirped. A raven on her shoulder croaked in satisfaction, if it could do such a thing.
She opened her satchel and unceremoniously dumped a stack of tomes onto the table. The pile fell over, some of the books opening up to random pages. One book teetered on the edge. Lania noticed Of-Jinan wince at the treatment of the century-and-some-old grimoires.
Of-Jinan walked over to the thief and began rummaging through his stuff. Cloak—off. Satchel—rummaged through, contents poured onto the table with a clatter. She turned him over and continued her examination.
“Nothing that will confirm connection to Zulfaqar's empire, that would be too convenient,” She grumbled.
She turned her attention to the books, reading them, flipping through them, and setting them into a neat stack. No longer were they haphazardly abandoned on the stone.
“Nadiyya?”
“Yup!”
“May I get an update on the bird tracking the monster?”
Nadiyya nodded, then chirped and squawked. “Give me five minutes for Birdie to arrive.”
Sanya choked on air. “You named your bird ‘Birdie?’ Creativity is dead and you killed it.”
“Hey! That's not fair. Sanya, stop being mean,” Mai defended.
“We know another is named Squawkles, it's looking hopeless.”
Mai crossed her arms and glared at Sanya. She then gave Sanya a kick in the knee for good measure.
Somehow, that was enough for Sanya to crumple to the floor with a soft thud and the fluttering of robes. Her arms shot to her leg—the one Mai had kicked.
“Oh!” Mai exclaimed. “I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to—” She bent down and placed her arms gently on Sanya.
“How hard did you hit her?” Zahira asked.
Lania had to admit, she was very curious about this whole occurrence. One, Sanya was cruel. Two, she was physically weak? Why did this look so serious? Mai went from playfully (okay, “playfully” was a stretch, it looked somewhat serious) reprimanding Sanya to looking after her with utmost care.
“Mai,” worry laced Sanya's voice. “I can't feel my leg.”
“What? You didn't even cast a spell, why are you—? I'm sorry! How did kicking you trigger the—? Can you move it?”
Sanya shook her head.
“It's fine. It'll pass, it always does,” Mai did not sound very convinced, she was trying to reassure herself.
The whole room was looking their way by now.
“What is this?” Of-Jinan demanded.
“The reason why I didn't want Sanya Globetrotting to Hope. Teleporting too much makes her body go all ephemeral and cold,” Mai admitted.
Of-Jinan's face lit up with recognition, catching on. “Spatial backlash?”
“Huh. I haven't gotten anything like that yet,” Zahira said. She looked towards Esmat, who was now sitting on a seat, normally. “You?”
Esmat shook their head. That made Esmat both a Spatial mage and an assassin. Hmm. Did Zahira have another class, if so, what?
“Maybe it's Cosmic backlash?”
“No,” Mai played with Sanya's robes near her stomach. “This definitely seems Spatial in nature—hey, can you strip for us?”
Sanya looked up and scowled at Mai, who grinned innocently.
“Why would that matter?” Zahira said.
“It physically changes her too. She's all weird.”
Sanya pushed herself into a sitting position on the floor. Then, slowly stood up. “Great—it's back. Nothing happened, everyone.”
“Elemental mage backlash isn't permanent . . . is Spatial? Maybe if you take a day off, or, like, seven—?” Of-Salama began.
“Temporal backlash is permanent,” Sanya quickly countered.
Of-Salama's face creased, then relaxed and went back to stuffing the goat into his face.
“Okay, agenda—get Lania into a residence. Reconvene for the red portal. I need to send a diplomat to Zulfaqar . . . the black portal still exists . . . wait for status on the blue . . . check on the scribes . . .” Of-Jinan sighed, pacing the room. She stopped and took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s take a walk to the residences, Lania. Nadiyya, want to come?”
Nadiyya jumped off the table, bird fluttering and cawing as its perch violently moved. She landed on her feet, and the bird found its place again. “Anything to spend more time with th—mrrp—e vampire!”
“Blunt, are you?” Of-Jinan asked.
“It’s nice,” Lania said.