113, 1/2

The butler guided Erick past the golden gate, into the low gardens beyond where bushes and garden beds held flowers of all kinds, and fruiting trees grew in the bright, ambient light of the Palace District. The fighting Shades were past another wall and to the right side of the Palace, and Erick was worried for a second when the butler guided Erick through another gate, into the proper city of the Palace, edging closer to the fight, but the butler took Erick to the left. Shadowflames and minor comets and ice blooms quickly went out of sight, on the other side of the Palace.

Fallopolis followed for only a short more while, before declaring, “We’ve arrived! Glad I could accompany you here, Erick. See you around!” She headed back the way they had come, toward the sounds of battle.

“See you around,” Erick said, to Fallopolis’s rapidly receding form.

She turned around and waved, and then she took a dark step and was gone.

Erick turned a fraction, and looked up, to face Quilatalap. “So. Uh. What about you? Are you going this way too, or…?”

He smiled. “Yup. I sort of have a room next to yours.”

Well okay then.

Erick turned back to the butler, and resumed his walk.

– – – –

The butler guided Erick over tiny bridges where water flowed freely, and past empty roads full of overlooks and nice little spaces for tea or breakfast. There were few visible shadelings, or anyone, actually, except for the automatons that stood like statues here and there in organized pairs, or quads. There were probably servant’s passages for the people? Erick wasn’t sure. He did look closely at the shadows, though. Usually, he could tell if someone was in them, because Meditation revealed some of the underlying structure of magic. It wasn’t Mana Sight, but it wasn’t nothing, either.

There were no people in those shadows. So either they were hiding rather well, or there were hidden passages in the Palace. Erick bet on hidden passages.

Eventually, the butler’s guidance ended at a small golden gate in the inner curtain wall to the back left of the Palace. Here lay a nice green land with a small pond, a myriad of grey stone walkways, and wild, yet obviously manicured and well-kept grasses and ‘wild’ flowers. Oak-like trees provided shade to a pond and a few other picturesque places, while the sounds of running water revealed the presence of streams before Erick could see them.

And in the center of all that, was a two-story grey stone cottage with a high-peaked roof and a short tower, that also had a peaked roof. It had some nice windows all around and a nice little porch in the front that faced the Palace.

And Quilatalap was right behind Erick.

The butler stepped onto the cottage’s property, then lowered his arm toward the house, saying, “Your bags are already inside, Archmage Flatt. Your personal butler is also inside, waiting to receive you.” He turned to Quilatalap. “I have been informed that you have guests, too.”

“I wonder who they are?” Quilatalap happily said to himself.

Erick looked to the archlich, and was concerned, for a myriad of reasons. Was he really rooming with this guy?

Quilatalap smiled at Erick, saying. “You can pick whatever room you want. I usually take the top floor main bedroom, but there’s another main bedroom on the lower floor. You can have the tower this year.”

This might as well happen! Everything was odd, and this might as well be odd, too.

Erick walked forward, saying to the butler, “Thank you.”

The butler simply bowed as Erick passed by, but Erick noticed that the man paid almost no deference to the archlich; he rose at Erick’s passing, and didn’t bother to say or even look favorably upon Quilatalap. Erick ignored, but cataloged, whatever drama that was, as he turned his attentions to Ophiel. Ophiel fluttered out into the grasses and the waters and began inspecting everything, both for Erick, and for himself.

“Soooo…” Erick said, making some small talk as they walked up to the house. “You stay here every year?”

“This is where I stay when I’m visiting Brightwater for whatever reason there might be for me to be in this District.” Quilatalap said, “But the Feast hasn’t been held in the Palace in twenty years. Not everyone is staying on site, either.” He gazed up at the house, smiling, saying, “I don’t get out here near often enough, so it’s nice to see this place looking well.”

The front door opened before Erick got too close, and a fast, poised pair of human corpses, one man, one woman, stepped out to either side of the entrance. Both of them had glowing blue eyes. Both of them wore dark robes. Both of them regarded Erick, instantly dismissed his presence, then locked onto the man behind Erick. Erick, for his part, sort of just froze. When he realized he stupidly froze, he forced himself to try to relax as he looked for a way to get out of whatever was happening here.

Both animated corpses exclaimed, “Mast—!”

Quilatalap interrupted the two newcomers, sighing out, “What are you two doing here.”

The man exclaimed, “We wish to learn again, Master!”

“We want to do better!” said the woman. “We can do better!”

While Quilatalap just frowned at the pair, Erick kinda, just, stood off to the side, not knowing what all this was about, not wishing to be involved, and yet not seeing an immediate way out of this. He was surrounded on all sides. He’d have to walk across the wild grasses to get away, and that seemed like a bad idea for some reason.

And then a meek-looking incani woman with big black horns and dark skin came out of the house, shoving the other two aside. Okay. Maybe not so meek. The two undead just looked at her, angrily.

This newcomer wore a sleek black business outfit with white accents, while her eyes were red and black. Now that she was known, she only had eyes for Erick, as she said, “Greetings, Archmage Flatt. I am your butler for the duration of your stay, and though I have been charged with keeping you safe and seeing to your needs, the last moment adjustments to the plan, which included a switch of location to Quilatalap’s abode, has allowed others into a space that should have been yours alone. Please excuse my inability to clear out the corpses.” Without acknowledging Quilatalap at all, she said to Erick, “Your bags have been deposited in your bedroom.” She stepped back into the house, offering Erick an out to whatever the corpses wanted, as she asked, “Would you care for a tour of the facilities? Or to see your rooms?”

Erick glanced to the undead, then said to Quilatalap, “I’ll leave you to your students, then,” as he walked forward, toward the door, saying, “I would love to see—”

The undead man said, “You do not deserve to be in his presence—”

Erick got too close to the man. He realized that as it happened, and even though he had a clear way forward.

The man went to shove Erick, to bar his entry, but three things happened very fast. Erick put up a thin shell of sunform, and that should have been enough. But then the incani woman’s dark eyes went wild as she saw the open palm aiming for Erick. She did something too fast to see; the man’s arm separated at the elbow, and the wrist and hand went away. The body part went somewhere, Erick couldn’t tell, because then Quilatalap got involved.

The undead man gained a hole through his center that rapidly expanded. Ribs, bones, spine, robe, and guts, all of that turned to a fine mist that billowed away from Erick, scattering red onto the white flowers near the house. The undead man’s head remained. That part of him bobbed in the air, as the light in his eyes went out.

Erick froze in his tracks.

The man’s head floated to Quilatalap’s hand. He held it up, and frowned, saying, “You and I are going to have a talk.” He looked to the undead woman, and his kind eyes were, for the first time, less than kind. “You, too.” To Erick, he mentioned, “See you at the opening ceremony in a few hours.” And then he walked down a path that led around the house.

The undead woman followed, like a silent mouse, or a very chastised child.

After a few steps, Quilatalap set the head in his hands into the air. A body reformed under the head. The remade man was naked, and skinny, but he didn’t look dead anymore. Color returned to the man’s body, as he fell in line with the woman, as they both followed Quilatalap’s march around the corner, out of sight.

Erick turned to face the incani butler. “That was impressive. You cut right through that guy’s arm.”

The woman stood straighter. “Thank you, sir.” She backed up into the house, again.

Erick allowed himself to be led into her vacancy, to step into the doorway, and into the foyer. His first impression of the place was that it was rather humble. And kinda nice. Nice stone walls and dense wooden floors and comfortable furniture. He turned back to the woman, who was herself comfortable, in an odd sort of way. Maybe it was the fact that she wasn’t a shadeling, and that threw Erick for a loop.

“What’s your name?”

“Violet, sir.”

“Do you work for Queen, or what?”

“I do, sir.”

“How long have you been here at the Palace?”

“Born and raised, sir.”

Erick looked to the incani woman with a whole new appreciation in his eyes, and said, “I think I’m gonna want a lot of information from you about everything that is going on around here, including: How is working for them? Is that normal?”

Violet bowed, then raised, saying, “This is why I was assigned to you, sir. But—” She indicated the grandfather-ish clock to the left, on the other side of a sitting area. “But the Opening Ceremony is scheduled to begin in one hour and thirty four minutes, and Queen has tasked me with getting you ready. I have gone through your clothes and set out the appropriate ones, as well as set out three outfits made for you, by Queen, in the proper style that should fit you well, should you choose to wear them. Your own clothes are only marginally approved.”

Erick smirked. He joked, “I paid almost 95,000 gold for those clothes! And from a world-renowned tailor, too!”

Violet bowed, saying, “Marginal is among the best qualifiers Queen gives.”

“Out of a list how long?”

“It varies, sir.”

“Fair enough.” Erick said, “Show me to my room, please. Mustn’t keep royalty waiting!”

“I understand you are joking, sir, but these are true words.”

– – – –

Erick’s room was beyond the foyer, to the right, beside the entrance to the tower. Both his room and the tower had large windows with nice views of the crystal mountains to the south of the Palace, where streams fell from thirty kilometers up and hit a hundred patches of green on their ways down. The room itself was comfortably appointed, with a large bed in the center of the room, an open closet, and its own bathroom, complete with a bathtub and all the proper amenities to make this a high-class place. Erick inundated the room with tendrils of light, checking everything, from every angle. When that search returned nothing, he threw a [Cascade Imaging] into the center of the room, to form an eighth-scale map of the house. He wasn’t searching for anything in particular, for searching for something as nebulous as ‘traps’ would give no results. He was mainly just searching for the layout of the place. In this, he was successful, but the place was pretty darn normal, as far as Erick could tell. Rooms. Bathrooms. Hallways. From all angles, this place was just a house.

But about forty meters down, there was water and crystal under the veneer of the land the Palace, and this house, was built upon. Erick’s mapping showed lots of hidden places down there, in the brightwater.

Violet watched from the entrance, her eyes firmly directed toward the clothes she had set out. Erick would get to those soon enough. He thought the black robes were a bit much, but they were better than the rainbow ones, and certainly better than the all-white ones. Oh, there was no direct problem with them. Erick could even see himself wearing the rainbow ones as a gag, and having fun with it. That wasn’t the problem, at all.

He supposed he was done with his investigations. He turned to the robes, and decided to address the problem. “Are these really the approved options?” Erick had expected a certain amount of pushiness from Queen and all the rest, and he even expected her to go through all of his clothes, but to so blatantly pick out what he wore seemed to cross a line Erick didn’t know he had. And there was another problem. “Where are my own grey robes? I liked those ones. I know I had some of those in my bags, but they are absent from the closet. In fact, all my grey clothes are gone. The only ones I have are the ones I have on myself, right now.”

Violet bowed, then walked away. In four seconds, she entered a room on down the hallway, then came back with the grey robes, saying, “Queen would prefer you pick something more definitive than grey. In her words, grey is a spineless, muddled color.”

Erick frowned as he took his robes, and tossed them on the bed behind him. “Is this Feast going to be a hundred little power plays like this, Violet?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I noticed that this house was grey. Does that mean she thinks Quilatalap is spineless?”

“It is much more complicated than that, but yes, sir.”

“… Why is Quilatalap spineless?”

“Because he refuses to take the final steps and become a Shade.”

“Then I think I will wear nothing but grey this entire time.”

“That is your choice, sir, but I would advise against it.”

Erick frowned. “Why?”

“Queen is not a bad person, but she has certain tics that set her off. The argument of grey is an old one when it comes to her and Quilatalap, but she’s mostly over it. This doesn’t mean that she approves of the color. You wearing grey to the start of this important event would start you and her off on the wrong path. If you capitulate to this desire of hers, going forward will be a lot easier for you and for me.”

“Explain this aversion to grey.” Erick wondered if it had something to do with Queen’s prismatic nature, or perhaps it had something to do with the greys of shadeling eyes. Or maybe something else?

“I cannot, for I do not know.”

“Speculate?”

“I will not, for I do not wish to be removed from employment.”

“Does that mean you will be killed if you displease Queen?”

“No. It means I will likely move to the Temple District, which is where my boyfriend lives.”

“… Fine.” Erick looked to the clothes laid on the bed. “In certain other circumstances, I would love to wear rainbows, but not here, and not now. So… Black. I guess.”

“Do you require assistance putting it on?”

“I do not.” Erick said, “Thank you, Violet. That is all.”

Violet bowed, then walked away. Erick shut the door.

Erick expended an Ophiel, propping up a [Prismatic Ward] into the room, the bedroom, and the closet, sticking the edges of the protected space into the walls, but no further. And then he poked around everything again, checking for holes or empty spaces in the dense air. He even lifted the bed up with his sunform. The thing looked to weigh a literal ton, since it was made of logs and sized to an orcol, but it was no match for Erick’s light. With over 200 Strength, he probably could have lifted it by hand, too, but that would have likely broken something.

There were no empty spaces in the dense air. When a dozen seconds of a [Cleanse Aura] elicited no thick air from anything, Erick dismissed his conjured armor and stripped, taking off his belt, but leaving on his rings.

It was stupid to take off his belt in an environment like this, but if they wanted to kill him, they would have done so already. So Erick decided to enjoy himself.

Standing there, naked, he decided he needed a bath. He’d been up for almost a full 24 hours at this point, and [Cleanse] was just beginning to feel like it wasn’t enough to feel clean. He stepped into the bathroom, and happily allowed three Ophiel into the room with him. They chirped in happy violins to be allowed into such a hallowed space.

Turning on the water, the bathtub filled up rather fast. According to Erick’s previous Imaging, the pipes to this house, and this room, were coming from the Palace. Maybe shadelings used the pipes as hidden passages? Eh. Whatever. The [Prismatic Ward] would block most intruders; it was worth over 100,000 points of defense, too.

But, like, did that much defense even fucking matter, when it came to rooming with an archlich?

Probably not.

Oh well! If they wanted to kill him, they would have!

Erick set his worries aside for a minute, because inside the dense air of his rooms, only the most dangerous could get inside, and what was the point of worrying, then? He still turned off the water and threw another [Cleanse] into the bath before he got in, though. No telling what sort of poisons could be in that water. Everything was getting a [Cleanse] before it went into his body, or touched his flesh, while he was on this trip. The [Cleanse] on the water turned up nothing. Erick felt a bit better about everything.

After a good soak to ease the tension in his shoulders, and a nice scrub with some soaps he had brought with him, that Violet or someone else had put in the bathroom, Erick [Watershape]d himself dry and went out into his room.

He put on the black robes, and then he looked in the convenient mirror next to the door.

He did not like the black robes. Not with his eyes as white as they were, nowadays. He switched to the white robes. With his hair combed and his robes fit, Erick put his belt back on and looked in the mirror. This was better. With some thin, yet strong conjured undergarments, both boxerbriefs and undershirt, Erick finished off his outfit with some conjured boots. None of those conjurings would do much with regard to actual defensive measures versus the big threats he had seen, but they would be fine for other, smaller threats…

“… If there were any smaller threats,” Erick mumbled.

Did those corpses count as smaller threats?

Probably not. Violet was likely a threat, but she seemed more like a spy than an actual, physical danger.

Erick looked to the clock in his room. It was half an hour till the start of Shadow’s Feast. He had been here for almost 24 hours, meaning that 1 hour would have passed outside of Ar’Kendrithyst. The sun had set when he had entered the Dead City, but by now it was truly night out there, for tonight, even the moons were dark.

He briefly tried to telepathically connect to Jane, to Poi, to Kiri, to anyone he knew, but he got nothing; they weren’t out of range, but they were still out of reach. Killzone had told Erick to expect this, but it was still disappointing.

Erick exited his room. Violet waited at the end of the hall, but at Erick’s appearance, she came to attention. After a moment, Quilatalap stepped around the corner.

“Ah!” He said, “We good? We ready?”

Erick said, “Ready as ever. Or… Should I eat something, first?”

Quilatalap said, “The Telling only takes an hour and that’s a serious event, but there’s food and mingling afterward at the First Indulgence, and you might be able to relax a little. Tania will introduce Bulgan to the Clergy at that time, for this is his first year as a Shade, but other than that, the Indulgences are not formal at all, and everyone always brings guests.” He asked, “You’ve been up for a while. Are you good to go another full day?”

“Yes.” With his high Vitality and Immunity to Health Fatigue, Erick could stay awake for three days, no problem, but he didn’t want to. He hoped he wouldn’t have to, either.

“Good.” Quilatalap said, “There’s a rest after the first party. You can sleep on the third day.”

– – – –

Past a twist in the outer roads looping around the Palace, down a dark lane, in a certain place, there is a gate of black stone set into the curtain wall that nominally separates the Palace from the outside world. It is not a tall wall, and they are not tall doors, but they are still imposing. Black fangs extend from that door, and continue left and right along that curtain wall. This is the only place that has such decorations. The rest of the Palace is all about grandeur and brightness and airy beauty. This is a place of hard truths, and gnashing teeth. One might find other such places all throughout Ar’Kendrithyst, but this is the one that was active, on this night.

The door is open; split down the center, the two halves swung inward.

Beyond that door, lies a flooring of dark stone tiles scattered about, that supports dark pillars that reach up to nothing but empty air. This dark space dominates an otherwise pleasant field of wild flowers of every color, and lush green grasses, while the crystal mountain to the south stretches directly up to the sky, so far, far above, and far away. Rivers flow down upon that impressive crystalline height to touch upon more wild green spaces. This is a cultivated, wild space. Or maybe it is one that was broken long ago. Or maybe, this was the finished structure.

The dark flooring of this space does not form an organized square upon which the pillars rise to an organized roof, but the flooring is certainly made of square tiles. None are broken. All are polished to a harsh shine. And while there is a large, central area of black tiles, the edges of this space are not so easily defined by any simple shape. In many places, the tiles go off into the flowering field, and though there is no apparent design, there is the feeling that those spaces are just waiting for the right moment to come alive.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

The pillars are not set to support any roof, either. They’re scattered about, like trees in a forest that have been burned black by a fire, and left in the ground. But they are not weak; thinking that a push would topple them would be a foolish thought. Their bottoms are wider than their tops, and though they might actually be obelisks, they are missing the final pyramid-peak common to those items; the tops are flat, as though waiting for something to be placed there. They’re polished to a high-shine, too.

This is not a wild space, though the strange architecture and the wild fields beyond might make it appear that way to some. If one were to look closely, they would see that the wild grasses grow over the edges of the black tiles, but they are trimmed to keep the dark stone flooring empty, and waiting.

It is in this space, where almost fifty Shades, and Quilatalap, have gathered.