12 – Peace Day Celebrations

Saffra froze at Vivi’s name. Daisy, ten-year-old girl she was, continued obliviously.

“She cast a divination spell. Locate Creature? She said it didn’t work. Do you know her?”

Saffra lowered her teacup onto her plate and set both gently on the table.

“She did, did she?” she asked slowly.

Daisy bobbed her head with total innocence, even as Vivi withered and died inside.

Why would Daisy think they knew each other? Sure, the timing made for a mild coincidence, but only that. With the hefty reward Daisy’s family had posted for such a simple task, the household had probably been receiving constant visitors. Why bring her up?

Everything had almost gone perfectly. Only children could bulldoze through good intentions like this.

“The spell was really cool! I don’t get to see magic often, and hers seemed really strong,” the enthusiastic Daisy chirped, happily petting the exhausted-but-relieved Monocle. “I thought it would work,” she said, slumping inward at the memory. She perked up a second later. “But you found him! So you two don’t know each other?”

“I’ve seen her at the Guild,” Saffra said, her face blank. “But no, not really.”

“Oh. She seemed…nice, at least.”

The delay lasted much too long, and even Saffra seemed amused by it.

“I think she is nice,” Saffra said. “But…I found him hiding behind some steps. She couldn’t have…I don’t see how…” She shook her head. “Divination magic is unreliable, no matter who you are. It was just a coincidence.” She nodded to herself, seeming to make up her mind. “I guess she read the poster I gave her, and came to try to help.”

“You’ve been passing those out?” Daisy exclaimed. Her face scrunched up, and she burst into tears again, hugging Saffra fiercely, which Saffra seemed to be half-embarrassed and half-secretly-pleased by.

The maid watched the exchange fondly, though interjected at the next opportunity with another desperate request to get the filthy cat cleaned up.

After watching the interaction a little longer, Vivi realized it was kind of creepy magically spying in on other people. Now that her involvement in the situation had concluded, she departed.

Overall, the mission was a success. She wasn’t sure how suspicious Saffra was, and would have preferred Daisy never brought her up, but Saffra hadn’t seemed to assume the truth. Thankfully Vivi had a solid alibi: maybe she really had stopped by just because of the poster. It wasn’t like Saffra’s first thought would be to think Vivi had orchestrated a rescue-mission-by-proxy.

The only loose thread was that Saffra knew Vivi was a powerful mage, and a [Locate Creature] spell failing might be suspect. But, as Saffra herself had said, divination magic was the least reliable of all branches, and mages had specialties. It was far from a stretch that even a powerful mage might fail a divination.

A clock tower chimed in the distance, and Vivi’s eyes turned its way. Five o’clock. Evening had arrived and the festivities below were ramping up, the streets packed as nearly every citizen started to mingle throughout the city.

From high in the sky, she could see where the bulk of activity clustered. The market and the town square were busiest, with preparations underway in the park—they were building a stage of some sort. Probably for later in the celebrations? The centennial Peace Day festival would last for seven days rather than the usual single, which meant a whole list of events.

Surprisingly, it had only been six hours since she’d arrived. It felt longer. A lot had happened.

She hadn’t intended to get involved with Prismarche. She had wanted to look around and get her bearings before heading for Meridian. Now, she had terrorized a bank teller, dragged two prominent criminals into custody, and drawn the attention of the Guard Captain and the Guildmaster.

So much for keeping her head down. At least her true identity remained hidden. Only the bank teller had any idea she was Vivisari, and he had been thoroughly convinced to keep quiet on that fact.

There was one more task she needed to handle before she could set down in the streets and walk through the city as a normal person again. A short errand later, she confirmed the train schedule, and that tickets could be bought as needed; she didn’t need to book in advance. Her only real goal was getting to Meridian, so she was pleased she had made real progress toward that, no matter how minor. She would board in the morning, after she collected the bounty and reinforced the cell enchantments.

Somehow, she knew staying in Prismarche would only further entangle her in local events. She had found trouble even when she’d been anonymous. Now that the Guard Captain and Guildmaster knew her face and had marked her as a person of interest, further debacles would ensue. She needed to flee. Get to Meridian and check on her house and guild. Helping Saffra and Allen had been worth her time, obviously, but she had goals to work toward.

Prismarche’s Peace Day celebrations were apparently something to behold, though, and they were going all out for the one-hundred-year anniversary. Vivi didn’t consider herself a ‘party girl’, but she wondered what lay in store. The next train didn’t board until noon tomorrow anyway. She wasn’t frivolously wasting time, besides in how she could maybe [Blink] her way to Meridian if she absolutely needed to—but she didn’t.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

She wanted to experience this world and what it offered. There was no rush.

The festival really started to pick up when the sun edged over the horizon and the world washed orange. With the last of their daily duties completed, the citizens of Prismarche flooded the streets and shed all shreds of restraint. People loved to celebrate, and there was no better opportunity than this: the day that marked a hundred years freed from the Cataclysms that had once ravaged the world.

Not that the newer generation understood firsthand what monstrosities used to crawl these lands. The Rampant Genesis of the Flesh-Weaver, the Crimson Blight brought by the Reaper of the Lost Harvest, the Great Conflagrations called down by the Ashen Hierophant to scour entire cities.