Chapter 4: The mahee conference, part 1

The number of merchants on the road all going towards Evadia should have been sign enough. Unfortunately, D’Argen had been away for too long. He had his suspicions earlier when he saw the crowds all moving towards Evadia, but then he knew for sure as soon as their small party ended their run at a fork in the road.

To the right, the road led to the city surrounding the castle of Evadia and its five white spires trying to break the sky apart but instead blending in as if they belonged there. To the left, and much closer, was an open field with no trees in sight and only dozens of tall stone columns to indicate a specific area. The caravans and groups of mortals were converging there from all directions.

D’Argen had completely forgotten about the decennial event that happened just outside the city of Evadia. Every ten years, the gods gathered in the field where they first came together after they fell to the mortal realm. In the beginning, it was only to be together. As more and more gods split off and travelled the lands to help the mortals, these gatherings turned into a place to share their stories.

After the gods built their own kingdom and Acela was crowned as Queen of the Gods, the gatherings became an official conference and the columns, along with a large stone platform, were put up to indicate where the event would take place. The conference was still centred around the gods and their stories, no mortals having presented on the stage ever before, but it had visitors coming in from all corners of Trace.

As D’Argen got off the main road and on the wide path leading to the conference, he noticed tents being set up just outside the pillars. A woman was walking around, covered only in feathers with a crown made of them almost as tall as her. She stopped to talk to another woman, this one dressed in a sheer gown that reflected the light where it did not cover her skin and a single metal band resting on her head. A third woman joined the two, her long hair dragging to the ground in hundreds of tiny braids. D’Argen easily recognized all three of them as leaders of their people from the Uni’Ga Empire, the Oltrian northern lands, and the Rube Islands due to their dress.

“Is this why you’ve all been so insistent recently?” D’Argen asked his companions over his shoulder.

“We were actually trying to get you to avoid it,” Lilian answered in a grumble. “I was hoping to get you here and gone before the conference. I know how the crowds get to you.”

“When did it start?”

“Looks like it has not started yet. Not officially at least,” Yaling answered this time. “Tonight? Tomorrow maybe?”

D’Argen let out a frustrated growl. He knew, however, that even if the event itself had not officially opened with Acela’s speech, all of the gods from Evadia would already be here. At least, they should be.

“Find Vain for me,” D’Argen ordered without thinking.

All three of his companions nodded and then left him.

As the God of Discovery, D’Argen used to be a huge fixture during the conference. He was expected to always deliver new discoveries to both the gods and mortals gathered there. In the beginning, that was easy. There was always a new flower, a new animal, a new drop of sand in the oceans that he stumbled upon. As the years turned to centuries and millennia, those discoveries became fewer and fewer.

The last time D’Argen had presented at the conference, he had talked about the discovery of a strain of gold in a mountain chain to the west. This led to three mortal nations claiming rights to that mountain and a war that lasted almost a century over it. Two of those nations no longer existed.

Due to this event, Acela had ordered him to report to her first before any new presentations. D’Argen chose to ignore the conference altogether. He was present for three more after that but did not present once.

The three women D’Argen was looking at earlier split apart and went back to their own small camps outside the conference area. A jewelled caravan passed not that far from him. D’Argen decided to move off the path completely and though it was crowded, he found his feet taking him to the official entrance of the conference field. It was a stone archway, as tall as the columns, decorated with hanging lanterns and gossamer sheets dangling to the ground. Very few of the mortals used it to enter the grounds, slipping in between the columns, but every caravan and cart passed through it.

A group of mortals pushed the sheets aside for the jewelled caravan to enter. Although he could see how filled the grounds were with people, stalls, and carts, that single opening in the cloth revealed even more. D’Argen straightened his spine, clenched his fists, and pulled his shoulders back. The heat under his robes was becoming unbearable, but he pushed aside his discomfort and then the sheer cloth to walk through into the area.

Hundreds of people were gathered between the pillars that served as a perimeter for the event and most of their stalls were either completely set up or in the process of being put up. The jewelled caravan turned in a narrow fork between the stalls and then disappeared into the crowd.

This was the first time in years that D’Argen was surrounded by so many people. Usually, the largest crowd he was in would be a small village gathering or a celebration in a small, distant kingdom. Most often, he was only surrounded by his three companions.

Within moments, he felt overwhelmed.

It was easy to spot the mortals that were there for the first time. The moment they noticed him, they bowed their heads, dropped to their knees, and some even touched their foreheads to the dirt ground. A young woman dropped her bag and then bent low to the ground. D’Argen rushed the three steps of empty space and quickly helped her up, afraid she would get trampled by the crowd around them. As a thanks, she fainted in his arms.

“Over here, over here,” a familiar voice made him turn. He looked right at Simeal, Court Physician and God of Healing, waving him over from a large tent near the entrance filled with cots.

D’Argen carried the young mortal over and then deposited her in the first empty cot he found. One of Simeal’s mortal staff went to her immediately and looked her over.

“It has been a while, D’Argen.” Simeal smiled at him and raised her chin in respect.

D’Argen noticed a metal band around her neck that was not there the last time he saw her. Outside of that, she was wearing a long open robe, dragging on the ground, and under it a simple dress that hung to her knees in pleats. Her long dark hair was pinched back behind her ears with tiny braids and multiple jewelled clips. 

D’Argen lifted his chin in a delayed response, though immediately dropped it to hide his neck, feeling too vulnerable around so many strangers, even if they were behind him and outside of the tent.

You are reading story God of Discovery at novel35.com

“It has been. I don’t remember the last time a mortal fainted in my arms.”

“I meant, seeing you with my own eyes. The fainting is happening a lot more this time around,” she said and motioned to the cots behind her. Most of the ones he could see were filled with mortals in various states of consciousness. “How long has it been?”

“What’s happening?” D’Argen ignored her question to ask his own quickly, eyes darting back into the crowd. The tent was so much calmer than the open field and he dreaded leaving it. Yaling, Abbot, and Lilian could find him even if he did not wander out. Maybe he could remain hidden with Simeal.

“Zetha is testing a modified version of his new spell,” Simeal replied and waved her hand in the air. “While it makes everybody hear everything happening on the stage, it also, unfortunately, makes all our scents much stronger when we use the mahee. Most of the mortals are not used to such high concentrations of our scents in one place, even the ones that come only for the high. Do you want a charm?”

D’Argen turned to face her with a raised brow. “Why not ask Yaling for help?”

Simeal was already rummaging through the bag at her hip and she scoffed at his question. When she looked up again, she had a bundle of leather cords with tiny stones hanging from her fist. “Has Yaling been around recently to make herself available to help?”

D’Argen immediately recognized the stones and flinched away.

“No, thank you.” He waved her offer away. “I’d rather stay in here, if you don’t mind.”

“Your choice.” She shrugged and shoved the bundle back into her bag. “Is Yaling with you? You should send her Zetha’s way. It has never been this busy for me before.”

“I sent her to look for Vain. I have to talk to him about something. Have you seen him around?”

“No. Not here. Well, if you see Yaling again, point her Zetha’s way. This is her spell actually, though modified. From the last time she was in Evadia. Which reminds me! When she was here last, Zetha had her working on quite a few new spells. I think he completed them only after she left though, so I am not sure if even she knows about it. There is now a communication array spell, which all of us can use regardless of aspect, and he has modified the distance communication spell.”

“Oh? Tell me more.”

“I will, as soon as I am free,” Simeal said with a wide smile. “I do have a job to do though. Sit around, make sure you do not get in my way.”

“Got it,” D’Argen confirmed with a smile.

Simeal once more raised her chin to him and then turned away.

When she was gone and deeper into the tent, D’Argen noticed that one of the leather cords had not made it back into her bag. He hated that stone. As far as he was concerned, it hated him right back.

There were not many things that interacted with the mahee at all, so the ones that did were easily remembered. This stone served to dampen the scents that came out when one of the gods opened their mahee and performed magic. Because each of the gods’ mahee was different though, they all had different reactions to it. Whenever D’Argen touched that accursed stone, even just a small pebble wrapped in a leather cord, he felt like his entire body weight doubled and like his feet were stuck in mud. It was horrible.

Even worse, he felt that weight inside his chest and deeper even, into the core of him, turning his mahee into a boulder that was hanging on the edge of a cliff, ready to fall at any second. It never fell, but the feeling was not pleasant.

 D’Argen ignored the necklace and moved to the side of one of the tent’s large entrances, able to look out into the crowd without being in it. Mortals that passed by easily noticed him and he felt their eyes like an itch at the back of his neck.

The problem was his mahee. It may not have been visible, but it drew attention to him even if he was not using it to release any scent. And then those eyes wandered down his body, making him uncomfortable as mortals looked him over from head to toe as if he was on display. He hated it, especially when some of those mortals turned away in disgust.

Due to his ‘self-imposed exile’, D’Argen looked a little worse for wear and a lot worse than all of the gods gathered there in their best robes. Even the workers looked neater than D’Argen. But it was only his mahee that drew the attention to him. Outside of that strand of magic that made the mortals take note of him, there was nothing extraordinary about his appearance. He had dark blue eyes that Lilian loved to comment about and long black hair that he wore in a high ponytail. His skin was tanned, he had a straight nose that lifted a little only at the end, and his eyes were long and narrow. Nothing special. If he was a mortal, he would be easily forgotten.

D’Argen’s official uniform as an Envoy of Evadia got torn to shreds centuries ago and his usual travel robes followed that same fate not long after. Because of that, he was dressed in a set of dark robes he purchased from a village in the Oltrian region a few months ago.

Not wanting to be on display, D’Argen turned away and walked deeper into Simeal’s tent. The cots at the back were all empty so he claimed one for himself. One of Simeal’s mortal staff came up to him, asking him if he wanted anything, but he brushed the woman away with a smile. Once alone, he closed his eyes and took in the sounds of the conference around him.

Without looking at the crowd, it was easy to enjoy it. He did not have to worry about that itch to run coming to him. One of the reasons D’Argen hated crowds so much was because he could not open his mahee and run through a crowd without killing every single mortal in sight. A more personal reason was that he preferred to be alone because he knew that he was too much for a lot of people. He was too fast, too loud, too annoying, too talkative, too friendly, too something else.

Fortunately, his three companions knew him well enough to keep him away from most such events and even serve as his shield in the cases where he could not avoid them. Now, with all three of them off on his orders, he only had the empty space at the back of Simeal’s tent as his sanctuary. 

You can find story with these keywords: God of Discovery, Read God of Discovery, God of Discovery novel, God of Discovery book, God of Discovery story, God of Discovery full, God of Discovery Latest Chapter