Chapter 39: Her Aura

Chapter 39: Chapter 39: Her Aura

An uncomfortable silence fell over the guild office. Standing by the window, Kael gazed out at the street for a while. Then slowly, she turned and addressed Allan.

"Sit..."

Allan seated himself on the chair across from her desk. The room was simple. There was a wooden desk, two chairs, and a cabinet on the wall. There was also a map of the region pinned behind her. It looked like the office of somebody who worked more than she talked.

"How did you know?"

She did not deny it. Allan had expected that. She took his words at face value, and that told him more than a confession would have. A person who is guilty will argue the details. Kael had immediately proceeded to the point.

Allan leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and kept his hands loose.

"Simple, really. The guild doesn’t mix with nobles. It exists for the people who would have nothing if it weren’t here, the explorers. You could have refused the duke and lost nothing that mattered, as the guild is independent. But you agreed anyway. So that only makes sense if there is a bigger power than the duke involved."

Kael then got up from her seat, walked over to the desk and sat right across from him. She never took her eyes off his face.

"It would have been a lot better for you if you hadn’t said anything at all," she added. Her voice remained steady. "And just walked away. Managed your own business. Now you’ve got me backed into a corner, and you don’t want me backed into a corner."

Her aura rose suddenly. Three gleaming rings burned into her forehead. The air in the room was so heavy that it felt like you could touch it. Allan knew it was settling into his chest even before he could comprehend it. Surely she had crossed the one-hundred level margin. Possibly higher.

Every part of him wanted to move, to do something, and put distance between himself and her. He kept his feet flat on the floor and maintained steady breathing.

"Let’s make an offer. An investment deal."

After a few seconds, she relaxed slightly. He breathed for a moment before he spoke so his voice wouldn’t sound strained.

Kael narrowed her eyes. The lights faded but the slight pressure still remained.

"You already know I am a Player. I know what’s going to happen," Allan said, his confession landing hard. Her stillness shifted, yet her face remained immobile.

"Your cult will require assistance once the rules around the world start to break. I’ll guide you, like you wanted. Only through side deals, not with membership. No oath. No chain of command with my name under yours. Understood?"

Kael did not respond immediately. The pressure in the room fell by degrees, as if she were determining how much of it she still required.

"Prove it," she said. "You could still be an imposter. Players are supposed to be wise, having knowledge like no other."

That was a fair point. He would have asked that same question himself. He gave her the first piece very carefully, watching how much detail served purpose instead of simply providing information. "Within the next few months, the Eastern territories will lose their harvest season due to something other than weather.

It begins as blight in a specific strain of grain your cult already has people observing, because it appears to be the early stage of something warned against in your scripture. It isn’t." ℯ

He did not give her town names. He didn’t tell her an exact date. It was "months" away. He just showed the shape of what he had learned, not enough that the information could be freely accessed.

"The trade routes will collapse once the granaries that would normally cover a poor season have been depleted from the previous one. Both guilds and noble houses compete for the same limited grain at the same time. The second wave, that’s where it really hurts people. It was not the blight, but the scramble after it."

He paused there and just let it sit. Certain cards you didn’t reveal until after the first two established you weren’t bluffing.

"I see. It’s not enough, but seeing your rise to power and you reaching one-hundred plus level already, that should be proof enough." She said.

Allan grunted, noticing the analysis crystal on her hand. She had been analyzing him the moment he entered.

"Okay, I get it. You are always three steps ahead. So we have a deal?"

"I will have to discuss this with the members, but I think I can convince them to leave your ass for the time being."

After another exchange of words, Allan laid out his limitations again and again. He would not be a member of the cult. He would receive no orders.

Allan didn’t know if the whole guild was in on it with Kael. He had decided not to fuck with them for now. There was nothing that could be done to bring the guild down.

Kael countered some of his points. Priority warnings on anything that directly threatened members of her cult and the guild, and warnings of disasters.

He agreed to most of it. He agreed to accept private contact. They settled on marked letters left at a dead drop near the southern gate. Plain enough that it would look like nothing to anyone who stumbled upon it accidentally.

The entire conversation lasted nearly an hour. Neither of them spoke again after the aura went down. By the end of this negotiation, both parties knew exactly what each other had agreed to and exactly what they hadn’t.

From his jacket pocket, Allan extracted a piece of paper and a stick of charcoal, sketching out the key from memory. His hand hesitated twice to get the spacing right in the notches.

He’d only seen the sketch from the dragon. "Just one favor," he said. "Find this. Make it quiet. Through your own people."

Kael picked up the paper and flipped it over, examining the shape as though she’d already begun to run names through her head. "Done," she said.

They were standing, but no handshake was exchanged between the parties. Nothing more was said. Allan simply walked out of the guild building without looking back. It was only when he was three streets away that he realized how tightly his jaw had been clenched the entire time.

"Haa." He huffed. "That was... intense."

The city moved around him at its ordinary afternoon pace. Carts. A few adventurers making their way to the job boards in loose groups. His hood was still up and his walk steady, because his body hadn’t yet completely released the tension from that room.

The pressure that Kael had exerted upon him was no longer present, but his body still shook. Yes, he had seen death for those couple of seconds.

He didn’t stop until the northern district opened up and he could see the gates of Oakwood Manor.

The appearance of the manor was unchanged from that morning. Solid walls. The gate guards who knew him and permitted passage without comment.

The ledgers lay in the courtyard as they always had under the covered walkway. He habitually flipped through the top pages of his notebook more than necessary, turning the trading income into cash on time. Controlled wages and repairs. Many of the slaves who were bound to the house were now free, and many who remained had chosen to stay as paid employees. Clean numbers for a change in a day which hadn’t offered him many clean things.

He went upstairs and collapsed onto the bed without taking off his boots first, something he had never done before, and now lacked the energy to worry about it.

The strain in his back had been growing since the aura hit him and still hadn’t gone away completely, but he closed his eyes for a bit, letting the silence of the house do its thing on him.

Thud!

The door swung open. Seris did not knock when it was only the two of them. She walked into the room and rested against his side, her warmth seeping through his shirt.

"Welcome back," she said.

"Thank you, Seris. I missed you." He replied.

Seris smiled, giving a different kind of warmth. "I missed you too."

"Where’s Lira?" he asked.

"She came earlier than you, so she’s finishing up in the bathroom."

Seris’s arms wrapped themselves around him tightly, firmly, more strongly than normal. "You can’t just leave me like that again. This place felt so empty without you. It was almost suffocating for me."

He could feel the day’s shape all of a sudden coming up to him. One hour ago, he was facing an S-rank aura. Now it felt like someone was leaning against his ribs, normal and comfortable. He hugged her back and pressed a kiss to her forehead, holding it there for an extra second before taking it away.

"If you both wish," he said softly, "you and Lira could be mine. Only if you want it, of course. You can tell me no."

Seris stopped moving. Her arms remained still, though her breathing altered beneath them. "Wha... what about Amelia?"

He didn’t have an answer prepared for that. The deal with House Arclight was still up in the air. It had been left open, awaiting a response which he hadn’t yet worked out how to make.

He’d carried that unanswerable question, just like he carried Kael’s disasters, filed and unfiled and unresolved, and it had finally come due at the worst possible time.

So he kept his silence, feeling like he had brought up those words at the worst possible time.

Thud!

The door opened again. Lira, hair still dripping from a bath, in plain pants and shirt. She looked at the two of them resting on the bed and shut the door behind her without asking what she had walked into.

"We could be concubines," she said, just like she was saying dinner.

Allan slumped back slightly. "Is that a real option?"

Seris sat up fully now. Some of her energy was returning. "It is a real possibility. You’re a noble. Yes, so of course it is. The only question is whether Amelia’s pride will permit her to accept it."

The room fell silent once more. "Look at me," Allan said to each of them. Both of them kept staring at each other.

Lira jumped up on the edge of the bed. "It’s not complicated. Certain houses do it openly. Some people keep their personal matters private. The law is only concerned that the principal wife does not suffer public shame.

Amelia comes from a large family. She will worry about the appearance. If we stay out of formal events and keep our place clear so she may accept it." Lira said.

"You know what," Allan said. "Tomorrow, I will make you two mine. Hell with what anybody says." He said, hugging both of them.

"But..." Seris said.

"No buts. It’s decided..."