Heart pounding an accelerating drumbeat, Lucas slowed his mana on reflex as he looked around for who’d spoken his name. The crowds had grown even denser since their first time along this road, and it felt like dozens of people were staring at him with a wide variety of expressions. He tried to tell himself most were just curious about the skycloaks. To them, he was just a member of the Order out on a routine mission in the city, with the only anomaly being the barrier around the Moontower.
There was no sign of anyone glaring at him. He saw no one approach. Nor any hint of an attack. After a few seconds turned up no hint of who had shouted his name, he turned to his companions flanking him on either side. Both were watching the crowds with assessing gazes. Judging by the fact they were both looking in the same direction he was, It was obvious they’d heard what he had, and he didn’t know whether to be relieved or more alarmed by that. A part of him had hoped he’d made it up in a fit of paranoia.
A lack of an obvious source only made his nerves worse. The worst part was how stupid this sudden heightened alertness made him feel. The mere occurrence of someone saying his name shouldn’t have been such a dire cause for concern. He ground his teeth and tried his best to wipe his face of expression. He didn’t know if he succeeded.
It was Florence who found it. No more than a handful of seconds could have passed, but it felt like a lifetime. He was sure his stomach was now the wrong way up.
At one side of the main road, a tavern took up the bottom floor of one of the towering wood and stone buildings. Wide open doors revealed three neat rows of benches packed with rowdy revellers, and halfway towards the back of the tavern a man stood on a stool, raving at the other patrons.
Dressed in a matching grey tunic and hose set with a few damp patches that likely came from recent spills, the black-haired man wouldn’t have stood out in a crowd if he weren’t above it. He wasn’t speaking as loud as when he’d bellowed Lucas’ name, but when Lucas listened close, it was clear the voice matched the one he’d heard. Wild, bombastic gestures accompanied every word. It wouldn’t be quite accurate to say the man had the tavern’s undivided attention, but a decent portion of the place was listening to him. Some were jeering, some were laughing, some were not amused at all.
Lucas looked back at his companions, ready to ask what they should do about this, if anything. Before he could open his mouth, the choice was rather taken out of his hands.
“Ah, and here they are!” The same man bellowed, his voice carrying from within the tavern. He possessed a deep tenor, and knew how to project it. “A man starts talking about uncomfortable truths, and look who shows up!”
Returning his attention to the tavern, Lucas found the man’s gaze now fixed on the three of them. There was something almost feverish in his eyes, and his grin was edging on manic.
Someone else in the tavern piped up before Lucas’ party could. “Oh, shut yer trap, Nial. Ranting up a storm in the tavern is one thing, but pickin’ a fight with the skycloaks face to face is folly.”
Lucas couldn’t see who had spoken up, but Nial evidently could. He whirled on someone in the crowd, pointing an accusing finger. “Coward!” He roared. “Never roll over and let tyrants take you!”
“What tyrants? They exist to fight demons and beasts, you mad twat,” someone else said.
“Yeah? My cousin said he heard they were arresting folk in the fifth ring, and those folk definitely weren’t demons or anything like that,” someone else replied, before Nial could.
Nial pointed triumphantly at whoever had spoken in his defence. “See! As soon as their Lady Claire is out of the way, they start trying to seize power.” He turned back to the front of the tavern and levelled a glare on them. “I don’t trust you bastards! I hate to repeat myself, but know this: Lucas Brown ain’t coming. Some other world whelp isn’t gonna save us now, and you delusional buggers need to accept that. He’s probably already dead, snatched out of the summoning by the Demon Lord or some shit, I dunno. Instead of waiting around and hoping this useless git shows up, we should be gathering everyone we have left to really take the fight to the demons. Every able-bodied Aerthian. Do a bit of training, form up into a thousand divisions, and make war with this Demon Lord fucker. It’s gotta be better than this slow, painful death, conceding territory and retreating every other fuckin’ year.”
The man looked quite proud of himself at his idea, and there were even a few voices raised in agreement. Others looked terrified or disgusted. Most of the tavern seemed indifferent to the proposal, more interested in the contents of their cups. Even in an ongoing war for the fate of all life, alcohol had to flow. Rosy cheeks and unfocused gazes were abundant in the tavern.
When Valerie’s gauntleted hand came down on his shoulder, Lucas was expecting her to turn him forward and lead him away. It came as quite the surprise when she stalked past him, moving into the tavern. Lucas and Florence exchanged a baffled glance, then hurried to follow.
Nial’s look of defiance appeared far less resolute once he had Valerie staring him in the eyes from within touching distance. Once he’d stepped down from his stool, she was still half a head smaller than him, and his bulk far outmatched hers. But size meant nothing when mana was part of the equation, and anyone with a lick of common sense had to know that.
It became clear the people at his table were all there with him, rather than just revellers who happened to be seated together. They stood, closing ranks around him, glaring at Valerie. She didn’t seem to notice.
But Lucas and Florence did, and suddenly he felt he had no choice but to step up to stand by her side. Whether that was because he feared for her or the poor bastards if they made the extremely inadvisable choice of attacking her, he didn’t know.
To his credit, Nial didn’t back down in the face of three skycloaks, taking a moment to compose himself and regain the fire in his eyes. His fists clenched at his sides. “So, you come to silence me? Can’t handle a little criticism of your precious Order?”
“On the contrary,” Valerie said. Her voice projected just as well as Nial’s did. Perhaps better. It seemed to fill the room, and everyone stopped to look at her. “Your plan is intriguing. I just have a few questions of my own, if you don’t mind, Ser Nial.”
Nial squinted at her. “Ask away.”
“It’s clear to me that you’ve spent a lot of time on the Front Lines and beyond, in the Blighted Lands itself. Since you’re so familiar with the place, I’m sure you’ve come up with a solution to the chaos effect, and how you’d train so many people to resist it? Your technique must be very good. Looking at you, I can’t even tell you’ve ever been exposed to the Blight at all!”
That got a few chuckles out of the tavern’s patrons. A few people had gathered at the end of the room, wearing aprons and such. Probably staff. They looked awfully nervous, the man in the expensive-looking embroidered red tunic especially so. Which Lucas supposed wasn’t surprising. They were probably concerned of a fight breaking out.
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In the other direction, outside the tavern, were a few more rubberneckers, looking far less anxious about the situation. Some appeared excited. If this scenario were playing out on Earth, he could imagine these same people with their phones out, delighted to get a chance to post something juicy on social media.
The thought of Earth dimmed his alreadyplummeting mood, and he shook it off.
“I can see what you’re doing here, skycloak,” Nial said with a sneer. “Is it my fault that I’ve never been allowed to go to the Blighted Lands, when your Order insists only those you’ve deemed fit are worthy of the task? Surely if more people were allowed to go up there and fight, our chances would be stronger!”
His comrades cheered their agreement, glaring and challenging.
Valerie rather took the wind out of their sails as she nodded in mock concurrence. “Indeed, I’m sure with a bit of training, anyone could handle it. Chaos isn’t truly so bad.”
Lucas noticed more than a few dark looks coming from others in the tavern, but they weren’t directed at Valerie. It was clear this Nial and his friends were severely underestimating what it meant to be subjected to the chaos of a demon’s presence, and the Blight would only be exponentially worse. That didn’t mean others were so ignorant.
Nial didn’t seem to realise that, though. “You skycloaks and your master just want all the glory for yourselves. If you let regular people up there, then we’d all see that you’ve exaggerated this whole thing, and then you’d lose your grip on power! That’s what it all comes down to in the end. Powerful people who want to hold onto it.” He seemed to sneer and smirk at the same time. “I wager Harwyck didn’t even need tobe abandoned! You Order types just wanted to move the Front Lines back so you don’t have to travel so far for your cushy position. My cousin heard—”
“Shut your useless cunt mouth,” someone else in the tavern bellowed, and there was a crash of broken glass as another man surged to his feet. Lucas turned to find a bear of a man looming over a table on the other side of the room. There’d already been space cleared around him, and it wasn’t difficult to see why: his clothes were filthy, his hair unkempt, and there was a wild look in his bloodshot eyes. “You don’t know shit about what happened in Harwyck, and yet you speak as if you have any kind of authority? I’ll wring your scrawny neck!”
There were a few dark murmurs of agreement. Those in the crowd who’d been taking amusement in Nial’s words didn’t seem so impressed anymore—not necessarily because they were as offended as the giant man was, but many were likely now realising this situation could soon escalate beyond a drunken idiot raving about nonsense.
Displaying the sell-preservation instincts of a lemming that had just seen its friend jump from a cliff, Nial retorted: “Oh, from Harwyck, are you? Tell me, how much coin did they pay you to leave your home—”
The bear of a man flipped his table and stomped across the room. “You know nothing!” he roared, his voice raw.
Things rather devolved from there. Nial’s friends rallied to defend him, but the massive man—presumably a resident of Harwyck or at least the county around it—was fighting like a berserker to get to him. He threw his full weight into a punch, and the first man to step into his path collapsed. In the next moment, the rest of them were on him. He fought like a man with nothing to lose, but he was outnumbered. Nial himself stayed at the back of the group, wide-eyed.
Lucas reacted on instinct, calling out, “Enough!” and trying to break things up, but those in the crowd who’d been unimpressed by Nial’s little speech came to the tall man’s defence, and the ensuing moments were chaos.
Florence pulled him away, moving hastily towards the back of the tavern, and when he looked back, he saw Valerie dragging Nial with her. In the sudden madness the tavern had devolved into, Nial’s defenders didn’t even realise a skycloak had him in a headlock. His face had gone purple, and he was thrashing desperately against Valerie’s grip—Lucas almost commiserated with the man, for he knew how unbreakable that grip was.
Barely pausing in her stride, Florence shouldered open the wooden door at the back of the tavern, smashing it off its hinges. The back room was full of barrels piled high, with staff cowering there, watching them with wide eyes. Florence led them straight through into what appeared to be a private area meant for workers and residents that ran behind the massive buildings. People had gathered, hearing the burgeoning melee that had overtaken the tavern. Some asked for explanation, but their group gave nothing, not halting for a moment.
Florence picked a building seemingly at random, then shouldered through its door. Into a dark corridor they went, then through another door that led to a set of stairs down into a dusty old cellar. Lucas barely had time to look around in bafflement; before he could ask what they were doing here, Florence aimed a savage kick at one of the walls, and the sound it made wasn’t right. There was an echo like someone had rung a gong, and the wall parted. The hidden door revealed yet another set of stairs, heading down into darkness.
Once again, Florence barely broke stride, leading them down. Lucas, Valerie, and their red-faced captive followed, and the secret passage closed behind them with an ominous thunk. Figuring they were no longer likely to face combat, he reversed his grip on his mana, speeding it up instead and projecting it out around him in a sphere so he’d at least have some idea of where he was going. They descended into darkness, and at this point Lucas was beyond bothering to try and ask questions. He had a decent idea of what was going on, anyway.
It had been little more than a footnote in the education they’d given him, an offhand mention. Dawnguard was old. The inner ring was said to have been built over 5,000 years ago. The second, where they were, could be dated back 3,800. Naturally, many things had changed over such immense timespans, the needs of the people shifting. Buildings fell or were obsolete or deemed unsafe, and were rebuilt. City planners saw that things were moving inefficiently, and decided a restructuring was in order. Hell, even in the last 100 years, Claire had decided some impoverished districts—the equivalent of shanty towns and such—required upscaling. Homelessness was not tolerated in Dawnguard under her watch.
But that was on the surface. Tearing down and rebuilding structures that had been dug into the ground itself was a far more difficult prospect, even with geomancers on hand. Or so they claimed. Lucas wasn’t sure that made much sense, and suspected there was more to it.
Regardless, it meant that there were a lot of underground spaces in the city that hadn’t changed in a very long time. Nothing so extensive as a true subterranean network that spanned the entire city. Most only covered a few blocks at a time, former basement levels of long-demolished old palaces and that kind of thing.
Among the many things skycloaks were expected to know, the sublevels of the city took fairly high precedence. While the Moontower suited almost all of their needs, it was always good to have safe houses to fall back to, and it was important to know where they were and who controlled them—the Order wasn’t the only organisation with knowledge of these places, after all.
Needless to say, Lucas didn’t know a single one of them at this point. He just knew they were now inside one. And, glancing back into the darkness where he knew Valerie and her captive were following, he had a pretty good idea why they were down here.
They didn’t need to walk in pitch black for long. It couldn’t have been more than a minute before Florence found another door, but she was much gentler with it this time. Pushing it open rather than kicking it down, Florence led them into a room that was only just a shade brighter than the total blackness they’d just somehow navigated through, then released his arm. Squinting in the gloom, he could just about make out they were in a small room with one wall lined with chests, another with bunk beds enough for perhaps six people, and a third with stacked wooden tables and chairs. In all, it was barely ten paces wide, perfectly square. There was no discernable source for the greyish light that made the room visible even with his mana sense, which was eerie.
Valerie wasted no time. She pulled her captive over to the side of the room with the tables and chairs, pulled out a chair, and sat him down on it. As soon as her grip on his neck was gone, Nial let out a wheezing cough, and sputtered, “What in the five hells are you playing at. I have—”
His words cut off as Valerie slapped him hard enough that a glob of fluid went flying from his mouth. In the grey light, it was hard to tell if it was saliva or blood.
Florence moved toclose the door, and silence settled on the room.
“Ser Nial, was it?” Valerie asked. She crouched down in front of him. “In the interests of ensuring you’re not at a disadvantage, allow me to introduce myself: my name is Valerie Vayon.”
Nial went rigid and his breath hitched. In the gloom, his wide eyes looked almost comical.
“Now, I have some questions for you,” she continued casually.
Discord :)
