Chapter 163: Chapter 161: Art

Refraining from calling Idleaf’s name out loud, I searched my surroundings, fully focused on my domain. I know, stupid. Her spirit form evaded my detection so far, and what’s more, its range was only half of where she could move. All in all, I had a much better chance of seeing or hearing her than detecting her in my domain.

Yet, I didn’t. Despite my sail-sized ears and Idleaf’s violet spectral form, which shouldn’t have been hard to miss in the crowd of people among the stalls in Labyrinth Square, I was unable to find her. 

What the fuck should I do?

That one annoying question, which always came with a hint of panic, popped up in my mind as time went on. Seriously, though. What should I do?

Sah might know where Idleaf was. He was out there somewhere. I was sure of it, feeling his presence on the back of my neck. But to do so would only show my incompetence in managing the spirit of the World Tree and played into the hands of the City Lord and his ilk, giving them a reason to banish her from the city. Not that I believe this little slip-up would have been nearly enough for them to go through with it. More such blunders might, though.

Anyway, I had no idea how to contact Agent Sah even if I wanted to, so...shit! Why didn’t I think of that earlier? Stupid. I could call Idleaf the same way I let her know it was the right time to show up at the barracks. The rune tattoo on my waist. If my stupid brain wasn’t so damn slow, I could have saved myself a lot of distress.

Not hesitating, I gathered my mana and was about to shift it to the rune when my ears twitched over a high-pitched female voice. “What the actual fuck! What the heck are you, and what are you doing in my wagon?!”

No doubt, Idleaf. Who else but her would enter the wagon of one of the traders and elicit such a reaction? 

Without a second to spare, I dashed to the stall behind which the parked wagon was the source of the racket. As I learned, an easy hallmark of traveling merchants and traders. Unlike those who were permanently stationed here, they usually had a wagon with draft animals parked behind the tent with the goods on display. Moreover, they usually couldn’t afford spots closer to the center of Labyrinth Square; hence, one might more likely find them on the edges and street entrances to the square like this one.

At first glance, a neat stall dealing in...paintings? Seriously? Seeing the trader’s goods gave me pause, as it was hard to imagine what the seekers would want one of these for. Could one of those stop the beast’s attack or kill it? 

“Guards!” shouted the woman from within the wagon, by the sound of her voice, more pissed off than scared.

Sighing, I raised my voice as well. “Idleaf!”

In the next moment, the spirit of the World Tree formed beside me, looking at me with questions in her eyes. “Yes, Korra’leigh?”

“You,” the woman looking to be in her late 40s pointed at me as she climbed out of her car. “Is that thing yours?”

[Merchant: lvl 134]

One look and my thought of her being some kind of artist, [Painter] or something, had been shattered. She turned out to be just re-selling the stuff. Oh, what a letdown.

“Yes, ma’am. She’s with me. I apologize for her.” There was no reason to tell her off the bat who Idleaf was.

“I don’t give a shit about your apologies!” she barked and darted for me, shoving her finger almost in my face. “I caught your summon trying to steal my goods red-handed. You’re not getting out of this, bitch. Guards!”

Wincing as her screams made my ears ring, I tried to stay calm, despite how uncomfortable this whole plight made me feel. “Ma’am, I don’t believe she was trying to steal from you.” What would she do with a painting?

“I did not,” Idleaf objected, offended by the absurd accusation of the Merchant. “I was just looking, not touching, as you told me, Korra’leigh.”

“In the back of my damn wagon? You think I was born yesterday? Only an idiot would believe such a blatant lie. Guards!” she shouted again, even louder than before, forcing me to flatten my ears. “Guar...there you are, finally.”

A smirk appeared on her face as the pair of master guards emerged from the crowd. The sight of them gave me mixed feelings. On the one hand, I was glad that the woman would have no reason to keep screaming, thus further destroying my hearing. On the other, I wondered how they got here so fast.

They sure as hell didn’t come to my aid so quickly when the slavers tried to put the collar on me. Seriously, where were they back then? Yeah, there was still a bit of resentment in my heart.

But to be fair, the slavers were dressed as city guards and had Aspen, a former member of the Castiana City Guards, with them. In her years of service, she must have patrolled these parts of the city as well as these two and know their patrol routes and schedules. Not that knowing that made seeing those two master guards come so quickly any easier.

However, whatever the reason was, they were here. A man and a woman. [Swordmaster] and [Nature Mage], whose levels were at least double mine. Ordinary guards didn’t patrol here simply because of a lack of power. The square itself was protected to some extent by old runes under the pavement, the power of which I experienced firsthand. The surrounding streets, not so much, and the city guards had to rely on their own skills there.

“What’s the problem here?” asked the man I didn’t remember seeing before, but his partner, if memory served, was named Tracy. The woman of smaller stature than me was present during the fight with Zander Denholm, the Beast of the South.

“The problem?” the Merchant asked as if the question offended her. “This bitch tried to steal my goods. She sent her summon to do it.”

“Guardians, I was just looking, not touching,” Idleaf blurted out to set the record straight, not understanding where she went wrong.

“In my damn wagon.”

“Is that true, Grey?” Tracy, the Nature Mage, asked. The fact that she remembered me didn’t surprise me all that much. I was the weird mutant girl who was the reason their barracks were attacked.

“Partly,” I nodded, seeing no reason to lie. “Idleaf here was curious. Ignorant of human habits, she glanced into the wagon, for which I apologized.”

“Is she really...?” the Nature Mage asked, leaving the question unfinished while throwing a glance at Idleaf.

Her gesture made my heart ease with joy. She knew; she knew who the spirit next to me was. “Yes, she is.”

“Damn,” muttered the Swordmaster and lowered his head. “It’s an honor to meet you, Idleaf...am I saying the name right?”

“Same here,” Tracy added, expressing her respect in the identical way as her partner.

Their gesture that Idleaf fully deserved didn’t go over well with the Merchant, though. “Y-you know this bitch? Her thieving summon too?” Her previous bravado took a hit as she realized this might not go the way she thought it would.

“We do, ma’am,” the Nature Mage nodded, keeping her emotions aside as a true professional. 

“Oh, so you’re in cahoots with this scum? Why am I not surprised...” laughed the woman snarkily. “What? You’re gonna arrest me in her place? Are you gonna try to shut me up?

“Ma’am,” the Swordmaster rumbled, raising his voice to stop her.

“I know my rights, and I will not be robbed in broad daylight!” the woman went on, not about to give up, even more pissed off than before. “It was her summon that broke into my wagon and tried to steal the goods. You can’t deny that. I have witnesses.” Her gesture when she motioned around was telling. Although I doubted any of the so-called witnesses actually saw Idleaf inside her wagon. 

“Every single one of them will...” the woman gasped as Tracy’s presence hit her. How quickly the Nature Mage resorted to using it, in fact, that she even used it on someone like a merchant, shocked me. Were they allowed to do that? Well, they had to be. Otherwise, they would be asking for an earful from Rayden, doing a stunt like this in front of so many people.

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“Can we have some civil conversation now, or are you going to keep throwing threats?”

“You...” the woman growled at the Nature Mage, swallowing the rest of her words.

“Good. So let’s recap. Idleaf here got into your wagon. They owned up to it and apologized.” 

Yes. That was about it.

“I-I...that thing snuck into my wagon, and it would have stolen my goods if I hadn’t noticed. Somehow you forgot that part.”

“I was just looking at these...” Idleaf corrected her, pointing to the paintings displayed outside. The young World Tree had struggled to find the right word for the objects, and despite the situation, I found the urge to enlighten her. “Paintings, they’re called paintings.”

“Pain-tings? Humans are weird,” she said, musing over the strange name. “What is their purpose? Are they for eating? But eating pain...licking perhaps? Would it tingle on the tongue? They smell funny, too.” We’ve been here too long, and her curious nature had bubbled to the surface where it burst into a torrent of questions.

“What’s wrong with it? Don’t you dare let it lick my paintings,” the woman growled, standing defensively in front of her goods, then pointed at me. “I’ll make you pay for every one that thing touches.”

“I said I was Idleaf. And I didn’t touch any.”

“Yet,” the Merchant pointed out, realizing her mistake right away. “Doesn’t mean they didn’t want to steal.”

Damn it. She was persistent. “Again, that was neither my nor Idleaf’s intention. She is not familiar with all human customs, and her curiosity simply led her to your wagon. I’m sorry about that.”

“And I said I didn’t want your apology. Seriously, why are you two just standing there? She confessed, what’s so hard to understand? Put her in shackles and throw her in the slammer, where scum like her belong.”

The Nature Mage gave me a tired look and her partner even sighed loudly, gesturing for me to go. “We’ll handle it here; you two go. Again, a pleasure to meet you, Idleaf.”

“I hope you like the city, despite this. See you around, Grey.”

Not waiting for the merchant woman’s reaction, I grabbed Idleaf’s hand and headed off with her. It wasn’t to my taste to leave like that, to not resolve the misunderstanding, no matter how. It simply didn’t feel right. But arguing with such a stubborn woman could have gone on for hours. Worst-case scenario, we’d end up back at the barracks, and I didn’t have the heart to do that to Idleaf. So far, she was immensely enjoying our stroll through the city, and truthfully, so did I.

The last few days and weeks have been quite busy for me; where I was pushing myself to become stronger, to get my head around my skills and class, and so on. Thinking about it, the odds for the days ahead were no different; more training, combat, and sorting of skills and skill points.

A break like this, this relatively quiet walk through the city, was just what I needed. For a moment, maybe even a whole day, just letting all those worries about me, mind mages, beasts, and empires just go out of my head.

And so, even though Idleaf’s questions were childishly stupid, I found myself enjoying explaining to her where she had gone wrong when she got into the wagon and the purpose of the paintings. 

“They’re useless then?” Idleaf questioned when I clarified they were not for eating or licking, but for display. And in a sense, she was right. Unless there were hidden runes, enchantments, or some edge added by Master Painter, I didn’t know of, the paintings might have seemed like an unnecessary whim of the humans.

“Not quite,” I said, thinking I would give all my wealth for portraits of my family, my memories of them dwindling with each passing day like an old faded photograph. No, as with all art, there was more to those paint-covered canvases. “Paintings, art in general, is not something that feeds you, warms you in the cold, or helps you in battle. It’s something that should stir your emotions. When you’re feeling down, your favorite song can lift your spirits. The same is true of paintings. When people look at them, they can evoke different emotions. Joy, sadness, anger, compassion...” I tried to explain to her as best I could. Difficult to do when, as a florist myself, the closest I’d come to art was making bouquets. “What did you like about them?”

Idleaf searched her memory, pondering on that. “Trees and flowers.”

“Oh, I like those too.”

“There was one in the wagon. Showing an elder...but everything about him was wrong.” 

That made me chuckle. “Very few people, if any, have ever seen your elders. So they use their imagination. Whoever did the painting painted the elder the way they imagined him.”

Idleaf visibly struggled to get her head around the concept, so I added more. “Where I come from, we had something called photographs beside the paintings. I think you’d like them a lot more.”

“What are those photographs?” she asked, her curiosity piqued.

“Pictures similar to the ones you saw but made with a machine; a tool, you might say. It records what it sees exactly as it is at that moment...” I told her, and went on to explain what such a tool could do while we walked through the square and slowly approached the center. 

The photograph may have captured moments never seen again, like flowers blooming in a rainstorm, the last moments of the beast, or the awakening of a tree like her. Regardless of the occasion and what was behind it, a photograph could capture it and preserve it as a memory of things that had come to pass.

In that sense, the labyrinth was the same thing, an art just like paintings or photographs. The black statue in the middle of its entry platform depicted the last moments of a woman who fought for what she loved and grieved for those she lost, making those who looked at her feel what she felt at the end of her life. Whoever built these structures let those memories seep through the whole of them.

The statue of Traiana was not what caught Idleaf’s attention, though. Her eyes were glued to the platform around the statue itself and the seekers, diving into or returning from the depths of Fallen’s Cry. I didn’t blame her. Watching them appear and disappear in flashes of white light was much more interesting than a motionless statue. Maybe a bit headache-inducing if one stares at it for too long.

When Idleaf managed to tear her gaze away from the strange spectacle and looked up at me, eyes shining, I knew what she wanted to ask even before she opened her mouth. “Can we come closer?”

“Sure.” After all, that’s why I brought her here. Show her where I’m going tomorrow with Squad Four, the entrance to the Labyrinth, the thing that hurt her in her youth. Taking her in was a different issue, though. While I could take a shot at it, I didn’t want to. What if something goes wrong? What then? No, it was better to do it in the presence of someone who had more experience with Fallen’s Cry and labyrinths in general than I did. 

Needless to say, that was most seekers.

Not able to keep her curiosity at bay, she glided most of the way down the stairs to the platform ahead of me. For the first time here, I spread my wings and did the same. It wasn’t a long flight, as the platform was only three meters below the level of the square, but it still reminded me how awesome it was to be able to fly freely. One day...

“This is the entrance to the labyrinth beneath us, beneath the whole city,” I said, realizing that she was one of the few who could tell how massive this structure actually was and how deep it went. “Can you see the bottom of it?” This time it was me who couldn’t keep my own curiosity in check.

Idleaf, not taking her eyes off the platform and seekers, shook her head. “My roots don’t go that deep. The rocks are too hard and hot...” She paused, her eyes still keenly studying the platform. “It’s like me.”

“What is?”

“That thing. It calls the humans and beastmen to itself, as I do my Guardians.”

“You mean it uses the same runes?” It wouldn’t be surprising. Even though she was from another world, the runes in both worlds were expressions of the same thing: mana.

“Yes. They call, and the thing brings them to itself,” she said, pointing to the back of her hand where the seekers… where I had the labyrinth mark. The teardrop-shaped thing glowed with white light as soon as I stepped onto the platform. Nothing unusual. The mark activated, giving me the option to move to Fallen’s Cry as it should. Only now it made me realize how similar the labyrinth mark was to the runes adorning my body. 

Sure, there were differences, but in a sense, not so much, just like Idleaf said. If I wanted to, I could let her know, and she would move me to her core, the World Tree itself. 

Was the similarity a coincidence? Could be. Most likely. Runes and stuff. Or...Nah. That couldn’t be it. World Trees couldn’t have anything to do with labyrinths, could they? That would be known, right?

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