Chapter 20: Conclusions

"Your truth spells were fooled," Derivan interrupted Tarilex. The lizardkin stopped mid-sentence, turning his gaze to the armor and staring for a long, uncomfortable moment.

"Explain," he said. His voice was hard.

"You have been running some sort of truth spell this entire time," Derivan said. "I wondered why you were acting strangely. You could not trust your spell or skill with the Guildmaster because she has perception-based skills that operate well enough to obscure her even in this space, when she is suppressed; that is why you wanted us here. You wanted to run the spell on us, to see what we revealed."

"Ridiculous," Tarilex tried to scoff, but his voice was uncertain, and the Guildmaster's eyes had hardened. The other four members of the delegation were still completely silent — and that was strange, too, wasn't it? "You can't prove that."

Derivan frowned at him. "You were not truly angry at me earlier, when I misspoke. The politics here matter less to you than the sincerity of the person you're speaking to. You softened when Sev spoke to you, because he spoke only the truth when he spoke of the infolock, and of what it meant to him. It confirmed to you that we were being at least partially truthful, and that he had a friend he wanted to help.

"You did not truly feel upset until Misa spoke of a bonus room."

"Oh." Vex frowned, leaning forward a bit. He still seemed to be a bit nervous about speaking, but he was focusing on the problem at hand, now, following Derivan's train of thought. "You wanted to give us the benefit of the doubt — I mean, kind of. You didn't trust us, but you wanted to give our story a chance. And since we were being deceptive when we talked about a bonus room, you picked up on that and thought we were lying about knowing anything about a bonus room at all."

"That's why you were being such an ass?" Sev groaned. "You know you could have just asked. We wouldn't have had a problem with being subjected to a truth spell."

"He couldn't. If you're prepared for a truth spell, there are a lot of ways around them, so you usually don't want to let your targets know that you're running one. If truth spells were more reliable, I would have pushed to have one active for all negotiations, just to guarantee that all participants were acting in good faith." The Guildmaster frowned. "No skills are allowed here. The wards on the pillars prevent spells of any kind. Even my skills barely work beyond securing my identity. I need to know what loophole you used so I can close it."

"We would never break the rules established by our esteemed hosts," Tarilex said, fidgeting uncomfortably.

For an individual that seemed well-versed in truths and lies, Derivan mused, he was rather bad at lying.

Vex blinked, and frowned. His eyes began to glow for a moment before they stopped, suppressed by the enchantments, and he had to blink away the sudden dizziness.

"I was wondering why four of you were so quiet. You have a delegation of five, but one person does all the talking." Vex frowned "This can't be a real truth spell. It has to be something passive, or some sort of tandem skill..."

"Both of those should be suppressed by the enchantments," the Guildmaster said, then frowned. "But if they're working cooperatively, they might be able to subvert it slightly. Maybe?"

"Maybe." Vex narrowed his eyes slightly. "Guildmaster, can I have permission to do something?"

"...Sure?" The Guildmaster stared at Vex for a second. "Sure."

Vex twisted around, digging into his tailpouch, then retrieved the bagged sample of Drunkard's Beard he'd picked up on a whim. Then he tossed it at Tarilex, who yelped, reaching out almost instinctively to catch it.

Almost instantly, he swayed in his seat.

No — almost instantly, all five of them swayed in their seats.

"What..." Tarilex groaned slightly, shaking his head. "What?"

"Okay, give that back to me now," Vex said, reaching out for it. Tarilex blinked blearily at the other lizardkin, then obediently handed the little pouch back. Almost instantly, he seemed to recover, his eyes sharpening.

"What the hell was that?" Tarilex said, and Vex flinched again.

"Sorry. I didn't think it was fair to engage with you while you were compromised," the lizardkin apologized. "But I needed to test that. You're from the Wisfield house, aren't you?"

"How do you know about that?" Tarilex frowned at him.

"I'm from the Ashion house," Vex answered, ignoring the way Tarilex paled and stared at him like he'd grown a second head. "I've worked with your house before. Last I heard, you were trying to find a way to turn your mental skills into some sort of biologically-based bloodline. Did you actually succeed?"

"I— that's privileged information, si— that's privileged information," Tarilex managed, but failing to have any real heat in his voice.

The Guildmaster was just watching, amused. Derivan saw that she was rather enjoying this, actually. Presumably, she enjoyed seeing them caught on the back foot.

"You're in some kind of mental amalgam," Vex said, frowning a little bit. "That's always been dangerous with your magic. So you're still partially suppressed, and you're doing this to boost the skill?"

Tarilex shook his head, seeming to strain for a moment as his emotions built, too complicated now for Derivan to read — until something seemed to snap, an invisible, taut tension abruptly vanishing.

"Shit," Tarilex gasped, and at the same time the human woman who sat two seats away twitched and scowled.

"I told you this was a bad idea," she said, looking annoyed.

"We were under orders to try," Leben offered, the orc looking a little guilty.

"Perhaps you are the adventurers that discovered the dungeon," Tarilex said. He just looked... tired.

There was a momentary silence.

Then the Guildmaster laughed.

"I should be kinda pissed that you got around our wards," the Guildmaster said, grinning. "But I have no idea what the fuck all of that was, and I kind of loved it. What did you throw at him?"

"It's Drunkard's Beard," Vex said, a little embarrassed. "I remembered that I had some, and I realized that if the Wisfield house got the skill to work without a mana cost, then it might not be a mana-related effect at all. So I sort of guessed it would work."

"You threw moss at him and you didn't even know it would work?" The Guildmaster practically cackled. She didn't seem to care much for decorum, now that the delegates had technically broken the rules — they all sat there looking slightly uncomfortable, like they knew they'd messed up. "Holy fuck, I love your team. It's such a refreshing change."

"Thanks?" Vex offered, still embarrassed.

"And as for you five..." The Guildmaster settled herself down a little. "I do believe this buys us some favors from Elyra. Really, now, you can't even trust us enough to tell you the truth?"

"You still have not proven that you are telling the truth—" Tarilex tried.

"Nope. Do your mental hivemind thing again. Come on," Sev interrupted.

"Are you sure? You don't actually need to prove anything to them," the Guildmaster said, turning to Sev.

"Yeah. I want them to know." Sev stared at Tarilex, who seemed to slump a little, like he felt guilty.

The lizardkin sighed. "...Alright. Go ahead."

"We were the ones that discovered the dungeon," Sev enunciated clearly, staring directly at Tarilex."There is an infolock, and we are likely the only ones directly able to investigate it.

"And the lie—"

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"Oh, I didn't technically lie, really." Misa finally spoke up, shrugging and smirking slightly. "But I was being deceptive, and you picked up on it."

"How were you being deceptive?" Tarilex asked, but the look in his eyes was defeated; he didn't truly expect an answer.

"I see no reason to tell you," Misa grinned. She winked at him. "Maybe if you're good, we'll share?"

"As I'm sure you're aware," the Guildmaster cut in smoothly. "This... incident... could be quite damaging to relations between Elyra and the Guild. I'm sure you could offer a small favor so we can keep things quiet? Say, allowing these four to join you in your research?"

"Fine," Tarilex groaned. "Clearly I've underestimated you four, and clearly that... other adventurer... of yours figured out some way around our methods." He grimaced slightly. "Or you four have. But on balance, you seem more likely to be telling the truth."

His gaze slid to Vex just slightly as he spoke. The wizard pretended not to notice.

"Jerome is a Gold ranker, even if the Guild no longer recognizes him as such," the Guildmaster said drily. "One does not achieve such a rank without backing. But... I am concerned. My men never identified that he might have spoken with you."

"So he got around your spies?" Sev asked. The Guildmaster twitched.

"Not spies," she said. "...But yes. Maybe."

"I'm concerned as well," Tarilex said with a sigh. "There are only a few known ways to get around our particular method of truth detection, and they're all worrying. Self-deception is maybe the least harmful of them."

"...I'm assuming your truth detection methods aren't vulnerable to the exceptionally common trait of narcissism," the Guildmaster deadpanned.

"No." Tarilex managed a wry sort of smile. "It would have to be magically enforced in some way for direct lies to come off as truth. There are artifacts that do this, but none of them are particularly good for your mind, in the long term."

"You think he's got something like that?" Vex frowned. "Does he know the dangers?"

"Does he seem like the type of person to care?" Misa pointed out.

"There is another problem," Derivan observed; Tarilex's body language was still... reserved. Like he was afraid of saying something? "What have you not told us?"

"I work with mental magic and somehow that's more unnerving," Tarilex muttered to himself, then sighed.

"Look. I said my hands were tied because I — we already made a deal with Jerome, and part of that deal involves connections he still had with some of Anderstahl's suppliers. He's on the delving team for the mission."

"Can you remove him?" The Guildmaster asked.

"We can." Tarilex paused, clearly uncomfortable. He winced. "He came to us under false pretenses, so... we can. Do you want us to?"

The Guildmaster glanced at the team of adventurers in the room with her. "I think that's up to you. This is enough of an offense for him to be ejected from the guild, too, on top of the demotion."

There was a short silence.

"...I'm not sure that's a good idea," Vex said slowly. "He might have a mind-altering artifact on him... and does he actually have anywhere to go?"

"He was kicked out of Anderstahl," the Guildmaster said. "So he'd have to find somewhere on his own. I'm sure many villages could use the help of a Gold ranker to gather crystals."

"I don't think I trust him to hold a position of power in a village," Sev said.

"I... would offer to hold him, but there would likely be some resistance on this matter." Tarilex grimaced slightly. He seemed reluctant to speak, but he shrank under the weight of their gazes, and eventually forced himself to do so. "Elyra has had some recent problems with food production, and the suppliers that Jerome has connected us to would pull out if we were to renege on this deal. Incarcerating him might cause even more pushback. We're already partially reliant on those suppliers."

"And the Guild doesn't really do prisons." The Guildmaster frowned for a moment. "It's a drain on our resources to hold and suppress people for that length of time. If an adventuring team is a problem, we usually give them minders, and split them up if need be."

There was a long pause.

"I think we gotta let Jerome stay on the delve, guys," Sev eventually said. "The food deal is the clincher for me here."

"It's kinda shit," Misa said. "But I think he's gonna cause more problems if we let him run around or keep him in a box. He seems like the kinda guy that would just build resentment. And I don't wanna be the one to push him into that. If we keep an eye on him, make sure he doesn't get into trouble... At least we can actually supervise him if he's going to be delving."

The Guildmaster sighed, not disagreeing. "Jerome is... we accepted him because he had nowhere else to go, but we have not had nearly enough time to work with him. He is shallow and vindictive, and it will take effort to undo this. Effort and time that we have not had yet. But it still feels like a failure on the part of the Guild, and I am sorry for that."

Tarilex seemed relieved. "Jerome's team is mostly interested in delves; hopefully there will be minimal interaction between you two. I do not wish to explain why I took on a second adventuring team."

"It's best he doesn't find out which team actually discovered the dungeon," the Guildmaster agreed. "In any case, I think that more or less concludes negotiations on this matter. I'm sure we all have a lot to think about. Tarilex, if we are to perform further negotiations, I look forward to all participants actually... participating."

The other delegates had the good grace to look vaguely ashamed, at least. Derivan looked over them — of the four, Leben, the orc priest, seemed to feel the most guilty.

"You should leave first," the Guildmaster added, directing the statement to Derivan and the others. "I need to go over the wards to see if they can be tweaked to account for this, and then we'll see what we settle on regarding Jerome. I might need to send people to keep an eye on him, on top of having you four there."

"I'm getting increasingly concerned with how you're talking about this man like he's going to murder us because we found a dungeon and he got scolded for being an ass about it," Sev said mildly, getting up from his chair.

"Transportation circle is that way," the Guildmaster said, ignoring him and pointing.

Sev eyed her for a moment. "You realize you're supposed to say something reassuring."

"I'm sure Jerome won't find out."

"That's even less reassuring." Sev sighed, striding towards the door; the rest of his team filed after him. "Okay!" he called back to the Guildmaster as they stepped on to the transportation circle. "We're all going to fill out our last wills and testaments! Wish us luck!"

The Guildmaster, amusingly enough, gave him the finger — though from the lack of reaction from the rest of his party, Derivan thought he might have been the only one that caught it. Anti-perception skills were strange. She winked at him, though, so he assumed she expected him to see it.

What a strange Guildmaster, he thought.

The transportation circle flashed.

A silver-armored paladin stood in their room, leaning against the door.

"Hello," Jerome said.

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