B4 Chapter 432: Briefings and Plans, pt. 5

Kaius pecked at his slice of toast, aimlessly staring out the window of the Dusty Stables onto the street below. He wasn’t so much groggy at having had to get up early — not with his stats — as he was a little more distracted than normal.

It had been an interesting few weeks, full of training and lazy explorations of the city. They’d managed to get more than that done, of course. Just a few days ago they’d met with Ro and a few Guild attendants to sort through the items they’d pilfered from Old Yon’s vault. Most of the art, artefacts, and similarly notable items had been left at the Hall, while Ro worked with the local governor to ascertain previous ownership.

From what they’d been told, it was unlikely it would be possible — in which case, it would be theirs. Of the rest, they’d liquidated most of it. The drugs and toxins wouldn’t help in second-tier battles, and, while they’d kept a trifling of luxuries, coin suited them much better.

He’d been surprised at just how much it had been worth — nearly seventeen hundred platinum, not including what was effectively sitting in escrow.

They hadn’t done much with all that wealth — not yet, at least. Kenva had suggested they use a chunk of the pot to build up their collection of utility artefacts before they left the city. Things that could ease their cross-country experience — namely, a bigger and better tent. Artefact tents could get expensive. To little of Kaius’s surprise, they were in high demand amongst his fellow delvers.

Regardless, as nice as the week had been, he was ready to move things along. Thankfully, their first meeting with Rieker and Ro had been scheduled for today — they were just waiting for a time.

Kaius felt the dull thud of someone kicking him in the shin. He looked up to see Kenva nodding at something behind him.

He turned. Hensch was approaching, smiling, as he brandished an envelope in one hand, his other occupied with the platter of tea that they had asked for.

The mail drop had only been 10 minutes ago, so Hensch must have sorted through it immediately.

“A missive,” he said, sliding the letter to Kaius. “I wrote it down, but the runner said that you are wanted at the Guild at midday.”

“Thanks, Hensch. And the tea smells great,” he replied. It really did — crisp, green, and slightly floral. The innkeep smiled as he waved them off, continuing his rounds to drop off more letters to the various teams that were clustered in the private nooks of the Dusty Stables’ dining area.

Kaius tapped the letter, half excited, half nervous. He’d known it was coming. It had been over a week ago that they’d settled on meeting with Rieker and Ro today. It would be an important discussion: how their knowledge of honours, aspects, and potentially even some legacy skills would be disseminated as far as physically possible. Likely, it would involve roping in someone with more pull than the guildmaster of a single city.

“Nervous?” Ianmus asked. “From the sounds of it, we might be meeting some bigwigs, or at least talking to them, through a communication artefact.”

“So-so,” Kaius said, tilting his head.

It definitely felt odd to be so open with knowledge, when everything he had ever learned from a young age — hells, everything everyone learned from a young age — said that advantages were to be hoarded and leveraged, not spread. He knew better, though.

Who else could say they had met more than one god? And who else knew with a certainty that legacy skills were a test of the System to see who could be trusted to share?

He liked to think that his father would agree if he were in similar circumstances.

It wasn’t just mindless idealism. The world needed an advantage — at least a small level of egalitarian meritocracy — so that every powerhouse who might otherwise die in a ditch with a status full of common skills might rise up and help them pass through the turbulent times ahead.

“I just wish it was a little earlier,” Kenva said. “Now we have to wait hours before getting it over and done with.”

That was a sentiment that Kaius could agree with.

“Let’s just finish our breakfast and go get ready. It’ll be fine.”

At least he hoped it would.

…

Heavy booms rung through the hall as Kaius knocked on an iron-barred door.

They were in the underground sections of the Guild Hall, though not a level that they had visited previously. According to the Guild attendant who had given them the directions here, it doubled as an office and communication chamber, containing an artefact that facilitated communication between Guild Halls.

That made Kaius a little nervous. Of course, he understood that being Silver would have implications, and that the scale of what was being proposed went far beyond the authority of even someone like Rieker. Still, he hoped that they wouldn’t be thrown into the deep end straight away, and Rieker and Ro would at least brief them on what was planned.

“Come in,” Rieker said.

Kaius pushed the door open, reinforced hinges creaking as the heavy slab moved. Filing into the room with his team at his back, he was treated to an awe-inspiring sight of runework.

A moderately sized oval space, the walls of the room were made of a thick stone masonry that looked every bit as reinforced as the training halls even deeper in the Guild’s compound. Half of the room was built out like an office or conference hall, with three desks and a collection of chairs facing the opposite side. It was that half of the room that held Kaius enraptured. It was raised almost like a stage and made out of a single, continuously smooth set of stone that he didn’t recognise. It was perfectly flat and level, clearly formed by some sort of magic. On it, every finger’s breadth of space had been covered in some of the most dense runework Kaius had ever seen. It was a script he didn’t recognise, of looping whorls and tightly bound runic characters spilling out in a great mandala. When they’d said there would be a communication artefact, he hadn’t anticipated this.

“Quite the sight, isn’t it? Few get to see a transmission room in the flesh,” Ro said.

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She and Rieker were seated at one of the tables, smiling at them.

“What is it?” Ianmus asked, staring at the magical creation with interest.

“It’s how the Guild stays connected over the continent. It allows Guildmasters and senior officials to communicate and meet as if they were in person, projecting an image of a linked room just like this one. I use it to make my regular reports a few times a year, but otherwise it is rare that something interesting enough happens in Deadacre for me to reach out.”