Chapter 51: Ch.47: Confluences Part II (Arthur’s POV)

 

Mage stone- a magically conductive rock created by the suffusing of magic into ancient metamorphic rocks like marble, granite, or obsidian. Its ability to absorb ambient mana makes it a choice material for use by arcane crafting classes like [Enchanter], [Artificer] and affiliated classes , especially when crafting basic items that do not require complex rune workings. Catalogue of Inventory for Yondouk's Magical Emporium of Arcane and Mundane Goods

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The departure from Elder Volemhir’s grove was in the eve before darkness. It was hard to tell time in the Groves unless you had a sylvani horolodial; Faerie magic had played havoc with Arthur’s perception of time. While Irindelle, Aithlin, and Galaeron ran interference, the other trio made a clandestine exit, shrouded in cloaks.

The cordon was tight as the [Arbour Sentinel] seemed hell-bent on apprehending Nora merely for being a Daywalker and Arthur too by association. She posed a security risk and the Sylvani in charge took their job almost too seriously; that or there was someone behind the scenes moving with ulterior motives.

Therefore, the trio of Arthur, Nora and Szephia used the Elder’s faerie gate, using a private keystone that effectively locked out pursuit. However, knowing the rooms in the Elder’s Bough moved around gave them a head start as; their pursuers would never find the gate they’d used.

Their exit point was at a similar gate in one of Lysfall’s under-districts collectively called the Undergrove. Szephia did not take half measures, and the Undergrove was the only place the Weald Watch would be hard pressed to look. The fact was, no one would bat an eyelid at a [Mage Scout] leading two individuals with drawn cowls in the Undergrove; what happened in the Undergrove stayed in the Undergrove.

When Szephia had spoken of an undertown, Arthur had expected a drab and lifeless district where the bottom rung nursed their broken dreams in bottles. He’d expected shifty idlers on street corners with avaricious glares and hidden knives, or downtrodden souls scraping by in less savoury professions under the cover of darkness.

Far from being drab, the Undergrove seemed livelier than most. There was pomp and colour to everything, from dinghy taverns spilling patrons as drunk as fish, bards belting the bawdiest of melodies, to chatter and laughter in the streets.

The Undergrove seemed to be an incessant atmosphere of gaiety and wonder and the general ambiance was of a bustling lakeside town that was fishy with the musky-sweet smell of deadfall decaying in the water.

Gnarled and ancient tree roots loomed large like gullied gullied cliff faces, blotting out all the light and casting a perpetual cosy dusk below. Run down Ildsteds and a mishmash of non-slyvani architecture nestled between the petrified roots turned stone, rising up several storeys in the air.

An ever present humidity that rolled in beneath the roots. There was nothing foreboding or peculiar about it. In fact, it was understandable since the water was barely a few metra below, brackish with leaf litter washed from elsewhere.

Above the water, old walkways sprawled forming the main thoroughfare, oftentimes joining adjacent buildings and streets with arched, trussed bridges of wood and vine. Nymph blooms, the glowing lotus bulbs as large as weather balloons, were interspersed between the structures and provided dreamy illumination as they trailed their vine-like stems into the water below.

Beneath shop eaves and awnings, garlands of fish, lake prawn, a melange of aquatic creatures, some familiar and some not, decorated shop fronts alongside the Faeriweald’s bounty of exotic fruits. Various roasts on skewers, sizzling fat on pyrstone braziers, wafted their aroma into the street where a menagerie of pedestrians went about their businesses.

In the water, fishing boats and boathouses bobbed up and down the canals, while gondolas, their long prows decked with chromastone lanterns, cut through the haze like lures from deep sea fish.

While it did not seem like a romantic getaway of ancient marble, the Undergrove had an endearing and rustic quality of its own. Suffice to say, there was a richer selection of cultures in the Undergrove than Arthur had seen in the Diplomatic Grove.Were they not on the run, he would have been excited about it.

“Keep your wits about you, Master Arthur,” Nora whispered, pinching Arthur’s sleeve through his cloak.

“Ri―right. Sorry…” Arthur murmured as he matched pace with his companions.

“Seriously... What would you do without me?” Nora sighed under her breath.

Arthur mumbled apologies and shook off his wanderlust; the Undergrove might have seemed welcoming but it still a place one kept their wits about themselves.The Weald Watch’s presence was nowhere to be found, which he supposed was only fortunate.

However, another presence kept the tenuous peace. There were eyes on the streets if one were so observant―street toughs. Most of them, as Arthur noted, were the Sylvani’s moon-cousins, the Selvenari. They were mostly six foot something, bulky and very much unlike their weald cousin as their skin tended towards darker complexions.

Most of them had a shock of white hair braided into knots, while those with mixed parentage had streaks of different colours in their hair. Stranger still, some of them had shaved their heads.Arthur had never expected any of the sylvani’s ethnic cousins to go without their hair.

A few had arcane tattoos and weapons displayed on their open dusters. Most were armed with leather saps and sometimes wands of [Spark Bolt] like some sort of magical mediaeval mafia. Open carrying of bladed weapons was frowned upon like some sort of code.

The only thing that was lacking from the picture of an undertown was scarlet maidens peddling their wares. Nonetheless, as Arthur would later find out, strumpethouses existed if one knew where to look.

From his brief appraisal, it seemed that the Undergrove was less a place for the privileged and more a place where vices and all manner of bodily pleasures could be found. One could even go as far as to call it the debauchery quarter.

Nonetheless, there was no time to play pleasure tourist because they had a date with a contact who would slip them out of Lysfall. As for whom they were meeting, Szephia had been less forthcoming with such information, leaving Arthur a ball of nerves. And that was saying nothing of the contents of the satchel that seemed weightier the further into the Undergrove they went.

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By the time they were deep in the heart of the Undergrove, the night had fallen and a drizzle had come spraying down on the Undergrove. Arthur’s thighs burned, and his breath came out misting as advection fog rolled into the Lysfall’s sodden belly. Szephia seemed to have a dogged determination to get them to their destination in one piece and that meant using the most labyrinthine routes possible in case they were trailed.

The sylvmaid did not show it, but Arthur could tell from her body language that she was at her most cautious. She did not stop to ask for directions or hesitate at cross roads to deliberate which streets to take. Time and again, Arthur had an incessant urge to peek over his shoulders whenever he’d feel a glare burning a hole between his shoulder blades.

‘Don’t pay them any mind,’ Szephia gestured beneath her cloak. She’d already known that they had a tail, but her pace neither picked up nor faltered. And so the trio continued their wend through passageways and back alleys; past loud taverns, sketchy looking ateliers spewing funky coloured smoke and dubious shopfronts. None of the shadows lurking in the alleys so much as twitched their way, nor did any drunks or hot-headed sorts step in their path.

If anything, it seemed like people went out of their way to avoid them, parting whenever they saw the sylvmaid strutting down the street like she owned it. Most denizens of the Undergrove seemed to have a good sense of self-preservation to recognise a dangerous character when they saw it.

After meandering through the understreets for what seemed like a whole quartz, they finally arrived at their destination. Arthur heaved a sigh of relief; the circuitous route made it seem as though the feeling of someone glaring holes bored into his back had been a fluke.

Shaking off the unanswered question of who their tail might have been, Arthur caught his breath as he took stock of his new surroundings from beneath his hood. They were evidently in a better part of the Undergrove. Above the thoroughfare floated paper lanterns that coloured the street below with dappled poppy red illumination.

The streets were well maintained and the general architecture evoked a certain motif― Arthur did a double take at the Oriendali style pavilion as his cheeks burned.

Around the colonnades, and on the friezes, were curvy feminine statues in luscious poses. The eaves were lacquered scarlet, and festooned with sheer drapery that had the florid embroidery of flame orchids while garlands of the same.

’Oh boy,’ Arthur cringed at the ostentatious signpost.

’ The Morning Dew,’ the sign read. Beneath that was the carved relief of feminine forms draped over the stem of a flower like pole dancers. The flower petals, resembling Calla lilies, were tilted back and seemed to be pouring water or whatever the artist wanted to portray as a liquid equivalent. While Arthur would not have considered himself a prude, there was just about enough innuendo to burn the tips off Nora’s ears.

“Follow me,” Szephia whispered, startling Arthur who’d been caught in a half-thrall. The sylvmaid unerringly headed for it through its streamers of faux silken flowers that hid away the entrance. Nora and Arthur both seemed to hesitate but awkwardly strode after the sylvmaid who was disappearing into the overhang decorations.

When they finally emerged on the other side, it was to the view of walls consisting of almost translucent material stretched over a wooden fretwork from top to bottom. And in front of the tambour door, with a boho style curtain on the threshold stood two of Szephia's moon-cousins; also nominally Nora’s since she was in a sylvmaiden’s disguise under the glamour enchantments.

The two Selvenari looked like Amazons-meet-femme fatales as they as they loomed before the trio with their sheer presence. Even the generous amount of skin from their laced corsets did nothing to detract from their dangerous air.

The two selvmaidens wore form fitting outfits of burgundy lace up corsets worn over leather breeches and thigh high boots with garters belted at their waists. The sides of their heads were shaved while the middle portion of their hair was knotted in a singular braid with purple highlights. One had a staff, while the other had a threaded whip. The only bladed weapon Arthur saw was the arrow-head-like ornament that capped their long braids; it was as deadly as it was aesthetic.

“Reservations?” one of the amber eyed selvmaidens drawled in a smoky mezzo soprano. The perfume wafting from her person was a heady, almost intoxicating oaky scent.

Szephia merely drew back her cowl for a breath and said, “Not buying, selling.”

It seemed to be a code of sorts, because a look of realisation seemed to come over the selvmaid’s features. She turned her head past their shoulders, as though expecting someone else to come barreling from whence they’d come.

“ No clingers?” she asked, with a one-arched-eyebrow look.

“ None… “ Szephia said.

“ You may pass,” she said. The selvenari guard stood to the side and motioned for them to pass. Her lingering gaze made gooseflesh ripple on Arthur’s forearms as they ducked into the entrance.

As soon as they stepped past the threshold, the smell of perfume, expensive liquor, and musk smothering the air almost sent Arthur’s head reeling. A haze of cured moonleaf hung in the room, rings of coloured smoke emanating from some lotus shaped booths interspersed on the main floor.

A gaggle of sylvmaidens and selvmaidens in sheer clothing that was just barely there strummed long necked lutes. Their playing and vocalised hypnotic melodies threatened to turn Arthur into jelly. Servers bustled to and from the bar, carrying a plethora of drinks in flute glasses and oddly shaped bottles to the enclosed booths.

A butterfly staircase led from the main lobby to a landing at the top, which doubled up as a viewing gallery where the courtesans paraded themselves. Arthur cast his eyes about, shying away from those sitting provocatively on a chaise lounge in a steamy press of bodies as he looked for Szephia's back. Nora suddenly clung to his arm, almost possessively, as she glared down at the other maidens from beneath her cowl.

Pulling Arthur along, she cut across the main lobby onto the main floor to the other side of the room, walking past magically warded booths. She approached another beaded curtain entrance, which seemed to have been disturbed recently.

The two emerged into the hallway with the same fretwork of screens on either side. A passing selvmaiden carrying a serving platter noticed them and motioned them down the way she’d come with a nudge of her chin . The duo finally caught up with their escort around the next corner with an open tambour door. It was a private room.

“Here they are—” they heard, catching wind of the tail-end of Szephia's conversation with the Morning Dew's [Hostess].

The Madame sat behind a low table, on tufted velvet cushions. The female was another busty selvmaiden in a bead-net dress. A gorget necklace with scintillating gems sat on her chest, buoyed by her voluptuous bosom, while silhouettes of colourful underthings showed through her dress, leaving much to the imagination.

Her skin's complexion was a dark bronze tone, while her upturned eyes were amber while magically altered hair, bound in a pink braid, was draped over one shoulder.

Beneath her eyes were jewelled tears and golden cat’s eye shadow. Their upturned shape gave her a feline appearance, like the ancient Nhemean personification of Ustrina as a Faeles beastkin goddess. If Arthur was so inclined to mention it, Earth's parallel would have been Bastet.

The selvmaiden was smoking cured moonleaf from a fancy quellazaire with ornate engravings. As a result, the room was overcast by the purple and intoxicating haze of the narcotic.

“Oh me—oh my. That’s quite the trophy, ” she purred, cradling one of her arms beneath her bosom as she held her smoking quellazaire with the other. She got up from her seat of decadence and sashayed around her table to appraise Arthur.

“Hmm, taken already?” She cooed huskily, blowing lilac smoke into Arthur's face. Nora almost glared at her while Arthur feigned coughing and pretended the room fixtures were more important. His cheeks burned when he saw that the bric and brac he'd mistaken for oddly shaped vases and hookahs were anything but.

“Enough Madame Siofra,” Szephia sighed, interrupting the selvmaid. “You have to get them out ere the moon rises.”

“Hmph,” Madame Siofra huffed, as she pivoted around and beckoned them to follow. The wall of erotic tapestries behind her seat was pulled aside to reveal an ironclad door that would have looked at home at the entrance to a vault. There was clearly some obfuscation magic at work there; otherwise, his attention would have instead been drawn to the titillating motion art of the tapestry. A clever way to hide an entrance in plain sight.

“You special cases are as brash as ever—no tact at all. You know, it is not the first time I have abetted an elopement,” she murmured.

Both Nora and Arthur choked on a scandalous gasp .

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The day was waning. It was just the quartz when the boundary between the day and the night blurred into one another in a bruise of purples and blues. The last pastel of colours shafting through the trees would have made a lover of nature swoon; in a word, no, a feeling, it encapsulated komorebi.

Such a time evoked introspections of the day’s events as the sun went down for many souls that toiled during the day. It was also a time when the veil between life and quietus was so thin that it took little to slip into either side if you had the magic and inclination for it. For those that haunted the darker half of the day, it was the beginning of work.

For the maiden drifting on the edge of unconsciousness, life’s candle burnt low sapped by the cold that ate away at her vitality and chilled life’s breath in her aching jaws. Long she had lay on the frigid, damp floor of the dungeon; wherever help was to be found, it would be running too close to call.

At the same time, on the other side of the faerie gate, several people said their parting words.

“Arthur ,” Szephia regarded him. Arthur quirked a brow; not once had the sylvmaid ever called him by his name. Szephia looked over at Nora and gave the dhampir an unspoken message through a nod.

“I might have misjudged you harshly on our first encounter,” Szephia started. She sighed. “Either way, I am pleased to say that you were a pupil that anyone would be proud of.”

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‘Huh, is that praise I hear?’ Arthur wanted to smirk, but now was not the time to be sarcastic. Bittersweet feelings of parting roiled in his chest as the sylvmaid's voice turned almost melancholic.

“Be sure that you read the correspondence from the Elder ere you reach the place you shall set down your roots awhile,” Szephia said as she pointed at the satchel tucked underneath Arthur's cloak. “Mayhap not for long, but who knows?”

Arthur nodded in affirmation, frowning at the latter part of her statement. In hindsight, she was right; his life was going to be one for the skies or the road. Nonetheless, Arthur didn't know what to say at a moment like that.

On one hand, the sylvmaid seemed to have grown on him. Even if her magnetic charm was sometimes not without an overbearing personality and constant high-nosing. On the other hand, their interactions seemed to see-saw from one extreme of professional detachment to overfamiliarity at times. Was that the suspension bridge effect?

“With that, my task here is done,” the sylvmaid said smilingly as she peered over Arthur's shoulder. Madame Siofra had led them through a false wall, an entire hidden level of a trapped maze, even an ordinary [Pathfinder] would have found it difficult to navigate.

The [Hostess] who had guided them to the bowels of the premises stood off to the side with a keystone touching the swirling facade of a faerie gate. She was evidently trying to chat up a flustered Nora, speaking on what Arthur didn’t know but nothing decent no doubt.

“I envy your free-spiritedness. Fair winds to you nonetheless,” Szephia mumbled; longily she too looked askance at Nora and Madame Siofra.

“I―” Arthur didn’t get a word out edgewise before Szephia cut him off with a chaste, ephemeral kiss on the lips. He barely caught her using her [Evanescing Wend] to appear in front of him. She made it seem as though she’d pulled her punches while training. Nonetheless, the transient intimacy left Arthur reeling with conflicted feelings.

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“That went well,” the now silver haired Nora said, peering at him with her glamorised irises. The transition from the secret basement of the Sylvani house into the Faeriwealds had gone off without a hitch. For the second time in a row, Arthur was relieved they had not been stranded between gates.

“Yeah right. If something else tops that, I’ll eat my hat,” Arthur said apathetically. He wasn’t sure that they were on the same page, but he played along as he tried to rid his mind of the pink colored clouds and bittersweetness.

“But you don’t have a hat,” Nora pointed out.

“Exactly…” Arthur snorted, deflecting. “Anyway it's really late. We have to get a move on.” he added, picking up the pace.

“What’s the hurry?” Nora asked, calling out after him as she jogged to catch his stride.

After the stifling atmosphere of the undergrove, the forest was a welcome respite. They could set up camp, relax and sleep away the laggy feeling of transitioning between places with temporal differentials, and set out the following day. It was almost too easy—

The disconnect between the Faeriweald’s time and the time dilation in the Lysfall notwithstanding, the late evening wealds had an enchanting quality to them. A chorus of insects echoed through the brush as zephyrs whispered through greenery shimmering with ethereal colours.

“The [Hostess] said we would arrive in the Shallows Wealds two days away from Chasm's Edge.” Nora said, casting her eyes around. She shook her expression of distaste. She blew the bangs of her silver bob away from her face.

“Huh, when?— Never mind, I tuned her out as soon as she started coaxing you to stay behind,” Arthur replied.

“Maybe we should have...” Nora said with a deadpan look before she outpaced him.

“Hey, what’s the big idea?” Arthur said, following after his companion. Arthur couldn’t help but think that, perhaps, the woman might have witnessed the spectacle between him and Szephia if only briefly.

He was starting to think it had been a ploy for the Madame to occupy Nora so that Szephia could carry out her scheme. And how on Eryth was he going to start apologising for something he didn’t see coming? Arthur was left in an awkward impasse.

“Gah—” He tousled his hair in exasperation. “ Look Nora, I swear I—”

“Shh—” Nora whispered, forestalling him with a flick of her hand. “ I smell blood.”

“What kind?” Arthur voiced, suddenly alert as he reached for his arcane pistol. It had more range than his spellcraft. He checked that the slider had been set to maximum.

“Equine…” Nora murmured.

“Weald beast?” Arthur asked, less wary at the response.

“No, for all we know, it could be a centaur…” Nora shook her head saying. She glanced at him from the corner of her eyes as they shuffled past the underbrush where the dhampir had scented blood, and felt the metallic tang of blood in the evening air. Arthur soon felt his throat go dry.

“Don’t worry, the beasts on this side of the Faeriwealds are relatively tame,” Nora muttered, putting one of her hands on his wrist before jerking it away as if he’d burned her.

“ There is nothing large enough to have caused carnage without my having sensed it.” she went on, as if nothing had transpired.

‘Wow― cold damn. I am sorry,’ Arthur grit his teeth.

“Which leaves people as a probable cause, ” Arthur mumbled, attempting to dispel the awkward air.

‘Of course captain obvious,’ her expression seemed to say. Nora snorted as she turned back to the direction they were walking in.

‘I tried,’ Arthur thought, swallowing thickly as he kept his off-hand on Overkill.

The duo emerged into a clearing to the weak whinnies of horse-like creatures—brunhorn. The magically bred offspring of an einhyrnd and some species of wild esellope were aptly named for the twin horns growing between their brows . The first thing they noticed was that the beasts, six in number, were saddled with packs. However, their owners were nowhere to be found.

One of the saddled mares was on the ground, bleeding from a fatal wound to its flank as its breaths came out in painful rasps. Its pupils were dilated and unmoving as it stared upwards to the sky. The rest of the herd watched on, pawing at the ground in warning.

“Primals above! it’s hurt, and badly” Nora blurted, suddenly on the move. Arthur felt sorry for the poor beast.

“Can you heal it?” Arthur inquired, catching on just how quickly she had caught onto the physiology of the brunhorn.

“I can try, but it’s lost a lot of blood…unless—” she trailed off as she approached the rest of the herd at an angle. Her hands raised ahead of her as she murmured unintelligibly to try and calm the mounts.

“Unless?” Arthur lowered his voice. He thought of looking through his magical knapsack to see if they had a healing potion; stocking up on potions had been an afterthought since both of them had supernatural healing. Arthur was worried that would be their undoing, as he mentally went through the items in [Inventory Chest].

“Unless I have some blood at hand, even just a little, the more magically potent it is the better…give me time to calm the rest.”

Arthur looked on as the dhampir girl approached the brunhorns. It took less than a heartbeat to calm them and tie them down so they wouldn’t bolt before coming back to Arthur.

“Well?” Arthur asked, eyes still scanning the vicinity in case some manner of beast had been drawn to the scent of blood.

“Hmm,” Nora mumbled, “If you are willing, I could just have some of your blood, just a little, ” she blushed, averting her gaze.

“Fine, go ahead.” Arthur bent down so he was level with the shorter woman, offering the side of his neck.

“Arthur, what are you doing?” Nora’s eyes darted all over the place.

“Offering my blood, what else?”

He heard an exasperated, almost manic giggle before his wrist was pricked by a sharp claw.

“Ow!” Arthur hissed, jerking back his arm. He spotted a puncture wound which was stitching itself back together. Nora meanwhile manipulated a ball of his blood which had a brighter shade of red than it had to be to her lips.

“You're too cheap,” she scoffed. “Turn around then—”

Arthur turned around just in time to hear Nora let out a whimper of euphoria. Under different circumstances, it would have been misconstrued as something less prim.

“You can turn back now,” she called out. The glamour of her eyes had fallen away to reveal glowing crimson irises and dilated pupils as though intoxicated.

Nora’s cheeks were flushed pink and though her voice was slurred, she seemed to have everything well in hand. She knelt near the beast, stroking its glossy coat to calm it down before she brought her hands over the wound,

“[Blood Art: Infusion], [Knit Flesh]” she muttered in an almost whisper . The injury glowed crimson before it started closing up at a speed visible to the naked eye.

The mare’s breath steadied before her pupils reverted to normal. Nora stood back to let it get its hooves under itself.

“I can still feel your magic,” Nora mumbled. “[Blood Art: Mimicry]” she intoned. Crimson lightning sprang up around the palms of her hand in buzzing arcs that almost startled the brunhorns. Arthur did not foresee such an occurrence.

He stared goggle-eyed as the lightning changed colours from crimson to red-orange, yellow and then electric blue.

“Hey wait! That’s dangerous!” Arthur called out. Unfettered lightning magic was hard to manipulate even with his [Fulgur Mastery].

Nora yelped in alarm before she dropped the spell.

“Damn, are you okay?” Arthur said, reaching for her hand. Arthur winced when he saw some serious burns on the back of her hands; they started healing at a speed visible to the naked eye.

“Don’t do that,” Arthur said, letting go of Nora’s wrist.

“Your lightning magic is harder than it looks. I can only use its diminished form,” she murmured despondently. The healed mare interrupted her by nudging her in the back with its muzzle.

“ Ah, I think it wants us to follow… Gotta find the owners, ” Arthur said, retrieving the Azure Surfer.

“Oh―apologies,” she replied. She went to untie the rest of the brunhorns and let them follow behind her.

“I’ll lead the way,” she said as she mounted the beast.

“Right behind you,” Arthur replied. ‘What is with you?’ Arthur thought, referring to Nora’s preoccupied state.

“Hiya!” Nora spurred the animal as she leaned into the gallop.

 

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