Chapter 62: 62: Negotiations

The food was actually really good, just as that Carac dude had promised. I had some sort of soup thing that had what looked like a ton of pulled pork in it, served with some bread that looked… well, normal. I wondered if the head chef was willing to teach buns.

We’d spent our time eating and trading smalltalk. Just generally getting to know each other. Turns out that this lot had heard about our strife with Fennimore too. Fucking everyone had at this point, Eilian needed to calm down with the gossiping, damn.

It also turned out that these people were probably the ones we’d originally set out for Millowhall in the hopes of meeting. That woman for example, Claih, was a well respected local Magitecht, as it was apparently called. She specialised in infrastructure and had been the architect of most of the modern magical tech around the city.

She was very interesting, that was for sure, and I was also fairly confident we could entice her into visiting us at some point. I mean, what engineer wouldn’t want to learn from an advanced university? Sure, we used electricity and shit, rather than magic… but most stuff was transferrable.

“You’re right, that was good food,” I told their head magic person, whatever the title had been, trying my best to be dainty as I cleaned up what was left of my meal.

“I find every opportunity to dine at this fine establishment, it’s a true treat every time,” he nodded happily. Alarmingly though, his smile fell away as he leaned forward, studying me intently. “I must ask though, and please excuse the brusque question. What are your intentions for this city going forward?”

Rather than answering right away, I leaned back in my chair to observe him and his party. Mainly it was to give my stupid brain time to calm down, because my goodness had things suddenly gotten tense again. Had my lungs always been this bad at the whole breathing thing? Fuck me, could my body please calm down for like two seconds? This was not anxiety time, this was calm and collected time.

It was Troy who spoke, his gaze cool and his eyes calculating. “Either you already know, or you will know soon enough. God knows our biggest enemy knows… Avonside is a new arrival to the ring. From humanity’s home world. A world that is significantly more advanced than this one in every area that isn’t magic, from what I’ve seen. We were also a university, a center of higher learning, and all of that knowledge was brought with us.”

This had Claih’s immediate attention, along with many of the others. She was leaning forward now, eyes flicking almost feverishly between Troy and me. “Engineering?” she asked, with no small amount of lust in her tone.

“Engineering, materials science, physics, the list goes on,” I said with a grin. “That last one doesn’t even have a word for it in anve. It means the study of the laws of the universe… although I expect they are going to have to rethink a few things when I start flashing magic around.”

“Carac, this is big,” Claih breathed eagerly. “You remember what happened the last time a human settlement arrived, yes?”

“The one from two hundred years ago, or the one from four hundred years ago?” he asked with a bitter snort.

“No one knows anything about the one two hundred years ago,” Claih said, waving a hand dismissively. “They disappeared, poof, gone. I’m talking about the earlier one.”

That caught my attention. Two hundred years wasn’t that long ago in the grand scheme of things, and Grace and I exchanged looks. They’d disappeared too? Where had they gone?

“Yes, I am well aware of those arrogant, awful, genocidal maniacs far to the north,” Carac said, looking close to losing his cool entirely. The guy had been pretty calm until now too. “If you recall, I lost my mentor to those savages.” To the rest of us, he explained through gritted teeth, “They call us Demons up there. Believe us to be the incarnations of evil or some such superstitious drivel.”

“Ah, apologies,” the magitecht said, seeming subdued, but only for a moment. “You can’t deny their successes though, they swept up a thousand warring clans and states and turned them into the largest empire on the continent. In just eighty years. Imagine what we could do if we could get even a taste of the new knowledge these Avonsider’s possess?”

Oh-kaaaaay. That was a little worrying. It was also exactly what Lord Fennimore had said he was trying to stop. He’d literally said that whenever a fresh group was transported to the ring, the whole region saw massive upheaval. Would we unwittingly be the causes of the next massive war? Would we be the reason that empires and nations crumbled and whole races were put to the sword?

“I’m not sure that I like the idea of unleashing that level of carnage again,” I said quietly, sharing a look with Troy.

“Ah, that is not what I meant, of course,” the woman said quickly, eyes wide. “I simply meant… well, everything else. Infrastructure, medicine, quality of life, they are all things that improved along with the chaos. Assuming you bend to their ridiculous religion and aren’t an obrec, with horns and hooves.”

We were all silent for several moments as we watched each other. I didn’t trust her still… but we also needed her, and badly.

“I have a question,” Grace murmured into the silence. “How long has it been since a group of obrec were transported to the ring?”

“Deliveries from our home world stopped almost a thousand years ago,” Craih replied, looking confused by the change of pace.

“That’s what I was afraid of,” my girl replied, brows furrowed with worry. “How many other races are still seeing these… deliveries, as you call them? How long do they typically go for?”

What was Grace up to? Where were these questions leading? She was clearly onto something here, but I’d be damned if I could figure out what.

“There is only one such race that we have contact with,” Carac said, his curiosity piqued now. “And the deliveries last for roughly six thousand years.”

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Grace gulped, like she didn’t even want to hear the answer to her next question. “When did humans first arrive on the ring?”

“Roughly six thousand years ago,” came the answer.

“We’re the last,” she mumbled, looking down at her empty plate. “Why are we the last?”

Wow, okay. My Grace wasn’t just a pretty face. That was a very important question to be asking, especially because Grace still had a family back on Earth that she loved.

Looking troubled, but obviously not ready to dive into that can of worms just yet, Troy said, “Yes… well, cosmic revelations aside… which we will definitely be talking about later... shall we divert back to the initial reason for this meeting?”

“We’re here to stock up on supplies for Avonside. Materials that we don’t have the infrastructure get our hands on anymore,” I told him truthfully. “We’re also here to learn about that magic tech you have everywhere. It’s new to us. I’d personally like to find some literature about mages and spells and stuff, but that’s not top priority.”

“And after that, we’ll be on our way,” Troy added with a knowing smile. At least, it was a knowing smile by his standards, which meant just the tiniest twitch of facial muscles.

“That is a relief,” Carac said, slumping in his chair. “I became especially worried for my job when you mentioned you’d only been on the ring a few months. Someone like you Ryn, who has had her powers for barely months, if I’m getting the arrival of Avonside right… well, you’d be replacing me within a year. As it stands, I am very, very eager to stay on your good side.”

“Oh, uh… thanks,” I smiled, unable to handle the look in his eyes, the one that was almost fear.

The discussion turned to specifics, and pretty soon it was realised that we each had something the others wanted. I was rapidly becoming wealthy in the obrec currency, stones or whatever, which they obviously needed. Who didn’t need money? We’d be buying any and all books about magic that they were willing to sell, which would cover that side of things nicely.

The second thing that we had that they wanted was our own store of knowledge. Claih would be coming with us back to Avonside to teach our people about magitech, while also learning everything she could that we had to offer in turn. She seemed pretty damned excited about that, which still had me a little suspicious.

We had a discussion about it in english and decided in the end that the information was going to get out into the wider world at some point anyway, it may as well be to a nation that seemed to be okay. Shit, they had my vote just for the complete lack of homophobia in their culture. It was a breath of fresh air even by the standards back home.

Negotiations lasted for a long while, but eventually we were allowed out and back to our grove. We picked up some strays though. The Stonechasers came for dinner again, including a whole bunch of the other merchants. They wanted to talk to us, something about a proposition they wanted to make.

So by mid to late afternoon we were all back in the grove and I was quite frankly tired of meetings. Still, the Stonechasers were cool and worth listening to, so we all wandered up to the second floor balcony with all its fancy new furniture and lounged around. 

I sat down with Grace on a couch near the two who’d be doing most of the talking, namely Troy and Jerril, the leader of their group. We hadn’t really sorted out the interior decorating in this room yet, so stuff was sort of just everywhere. Cream, the bun I’d named for her colouring, hopped over to me and began to beg for pats, which I obviously gave, because she was a good bun.

“So, is it alright if we keep this brief then?” Troy asked, leaning forward with his elbows on the small table he was sitting at. “That last meeting was a slog at the end there.”

Jerril gave a snort and nodded, “Surely. I must say though, having a base of operations like this on hand at any given moment is quite something. Haven’t really heard of mages opening their groves up to this many souls. They’re twitchy about it.”

“Seems like that’s because it's the mage’s center of power. If you took issue with Ryn, you could do a little damage to her magical abilities before she popped you,” Kit said quietly from where he was hugging his bun. He’d named his emotional support bun Sprinkles at some point, on account of the sprinkling of white on her otherwise chocolate brown fur.

I really wish people would stop seeing me as some sort of incredibly powerful goddess. It was intimidating. I needed to have a talk with everyone once things were more settled.

“Popped,” Jerril repeated with a laugh and a sideways glance at me. “Well, I’ll put it plainly to you then. We’d like to come along with you to this Avonside of yours, see what the fuss is about and possibly see if we could find some way to initiate trade between our peoples. I’m willing to bet it won’t be long before you are all rather influential in this region.”

“Coming back with a local trading partner ready to go would definitely be useful for Avonside, not to mention the Order,” Troy said thoughtfully, rubbing at his stubble. His expression became a genuine smile as he agreed to the proposition. “Alright, yeah. Why not. You can guide us along the way while you’re at it.”

“And show you our homeland!” Mer said happily, trying to clap with her big-ass gauntlets and failing miserably. How could the big scary alien lady be so scary and so cute all at the same time?

“What’s it like?” Kit asked, tilting his head, eyes intent on the woman. I smiled as he had to swipe hair out of his eyes, it was getting kinda long. Hairdressers were in short supply out here, although Grace had been doing her best with the skills she’d learned so far in her course. Then she’d gotten all zappy and the boys had to do it on their own. Kit had decided not to bother, saying he didn’t want to look like a shounen anime protagonist.

Since everything had been handled quickly, I gave a weary sigh and leaned back into Grace and tuned out of the conversation. Mer and Otho had launched into a passionate advertisement for their clan’s patch of mountains up to the north. It honestly sounded like the same thing as this place, but smaller… still, everyone loved their home. I just hoped we’d be getting back to ours soon.

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