[Severed Divinity] Chapters 43-46 (Patreon)

Chapter 43. Next Steps

Isen was surprised to have his own room.

The “hotel”—which Isen learned was like an inn with more amenities—was even larger than Isen had expected at a glance. The hotel extended into the rock; that’s where most of the cheaper rooms were. According to Talis, rooms with windows were much more desirable.

Isen still had the silvers he’d received when he’d sold his red monster silk, though he hadn’t needed to use them. Unbeknownst to Isen, Allezin had provided Talis with a pouch of money to be used for their accommodations. It was more than enough for them to all have window rooms.

Nearly the second they arrived at the inn, Lumina insisted that Talis and Druinala accompany her into the city. She didn’t say why, but Isen figured it was to track down a fire mage that the returned queen could trust.

That left Isen alone in the hotel. For the first time in a week, he had the freedom to do whatever he wanted.

The first order of business was selling the red silk and the feline monster hide he had carried with him this entire time. Next, he wanted to take his learning into his own hands. He didn’t know if Talis and Druinala would end up sticking around. Even if they did, they had better things to do than teach him his letters.

He needed a teacher, or at least written materials for learning elven sigils.

He also needed to find a more permanent place to stay, but figured that could wait until he heard the more concrete plans of the others.

He also wanted to find people who could teach him better techniques for fighting, notably using different types of weapons and manipulating energy. A cultivation teacher wasn’t out of the cards, either. He’d learned from Ros, but the beast had said multiple times that cultivation wasn’t the same for monsters and humans. Isen didn’t know if it was even the same for humans and half elves, but his hunch said it should be comparable.

Isen didn’t know where to look for any of this and he had no one familiar to ask. Not even Lumina Eldrassin herself—their bond didn’t work over long distances.

Rather than feeling overwhelmed, Isen was excited by the challenge. This was a true city! A massive marvel of magic that had existed for thousands of years! And he was someone who belonged there—well, that was arguable since he was a human in the Elven Lands, but still. He had power. And if he could sell everything for a fair price, he would have money.

He didn’t plan to spend more time in Eldrassin City than he needed to—every minute here was one more that Ros was stuck in darkness—but he’d probably be spending at least a few weeks there. It depended on Lumina Eldrassin’s plans and how desperate she was to learn more about the bearer of Legacy that had supposedly brought her back to life.

If Lumina Eldrassin turned out to be a dead end—for instance, if the fire winked out and the queen disappeared, or she decided she didn’t care about finding Isen’s ‘master’—then Isen would change his plans accordingly.

He could hardly wait to get started—but first, he needed to wash away a week’s worth of travel.

The room he’d been given was supposedly mid-sized, but Isen found it fairly spacious, perhaps a bit smaller than the room the entire merchant caravan had hunkered down in back in Shevenar.

It did feature a huge bed—about the same size as the one in the sanctum, which he’d always considered ridiculous. And this was supposedly a room big enough for one to two people! Were huge beds common for elves? The one in this room was easily big enough to fit a family of four. They’d be quite snug under the covers, but that was normal—at least in Goldbounty.

He didn’t even know where he was supposed to sleep on it. In the middle? Off to one side?

As Isen contemplated the mysteries of finer elven living, he finished stripping off the last of his clothes and armor. Now that he was in a proper room—one that had an obviously enchanted deadbolt on the door and locks on the windows, along with thick curtains—he finally felt comfortable taking everything off, including the divine sinew that connected to the Shard of Erasmus.

As he unwrapped the last of the string, he sighed in relief and stretched. Collecting himself, he opened the unmarked door that probably led to some sort of washroom.

He expected there to be a self-filling water bucket, a sponge, and soap. A towel or two. Maybe even a bristle brush.

He was greeted by an empty basin sunken into the ground. Again, easily big enough to fit four people. A spout with a cover poked out of the wall about a foot above it. There was a small handle next to the spout, and a lever that could be pushed up or down.

It wasn’t quite like the tub in the sanctum’s bathroom, but it wasn’t too far off. Isen looked across from the basin and saw a mirror before a wooden table with an elegant porcelain bowl at its center. This one didn’t have any visible handle, but Isen recognized a self-filling bucket when he saw one—probably.

He took one glance at himself in the mirror and crossed his arms. He really was filthy. There was visible grime on his hands and face, and he could see lines on his skin where the sinew had been.

The spout was simple enough to figure out, unlike the one back in the sanctum’s bathroom. The handle, when turned to the right, oriented the cap off the spout. Water gushed forth. It was lukewarm at first, but if he moved the lever up, the water became hotter.

For cleaning himself, the arrangement wasn’t as convenient as in the sanctum, where the water shot out of an overhead shower, almost like the creator had been trying to mimic rain. Still, it was so much better than what he’d been expecting.

After gratuitous use of soap and an abrasive block of pumice, Isen was satisfied with his appearance. He dried himself with a towel—one of four that had been left in a hamper in the washroom’s corner—and even used a small energy ball to dry his hair.

When he returned to the bedroom, he suddenly realized a more pressing problem—his clothes were crusty.

I got all clean… just to wear these?

He suddenly remembered what the half elf at the front desk had said when she handed Isen the key to his room, a small stone that was attuned to his door. If he needed any assistance, there was a small button next to the bed. He could press it and a small tube would open and carry his voice to the help, where he could ask for service.

The explanation had sounded outlandish, but Isen decided it was worth a try. Sure enough, next to the bed was a small button with a sigil next to it. Isen pressed the button and a grate he hadn’t noticed in the wall opened up. He was so startled he nearly jumped in place.

“Hello?” he asked.

“Sir, how can I help you?” The feminine voice sounded echoey, but clear.

“Could you give me a set of clothes?”

“Certainly—the hotel has an assortment of shops nearby. Do you have any preferences on color, trim, brand…?”

“Just—normal.”

He heard soft peals of laughter. “What size are you?”

Isen had no idea what she meant. Did she need his measurements? He didn’t know those either, to be fair. “What are the options?”

She paused. “The normal off the shelf sizes, sir.”

He felt himself blushing. “Which are?"

“Small, medium, and large.”

Isen figured medium would be safe. “Medium, then. I need a shirt and trousers.” He needed a jacket or cloak and better shoes, as well, but he could get those on his own later. “How do I pay?”

“It’ll be added to the room. You’ll pay later.”

“Great,” he said, surprised it was all so easy.

“They’ll be delivered within the hour.”

With that, the conversation ended. Isen pressed the button again and the grate shut, leaving him in silence.

He plopped down on the bed and picked up the pin from where he’d left it on the bedside table. It was shiny, like lacquered metal, and prominently featured the white four-pointed star on a bright blue background. On the way to the hotel, Isen had looked for the pins on other civilians. Even in the capital, most people were half elves, and had blue pins if they had pins at all. The elves, on the other hand, possessed violet pins.

Cultivators and mages. It was good to know.

He set the pin back down and closed his eyes, resting on the bed’s white outer blanket. He was impatient to see the city, but… maybe some rest was in order.

He woke up to the sound of gentle knocking on the door. Isen swiftly wrapped the towel around his waist and cracked the door ajar.

There was a woman on the other side, a half elf with a square parcel wrapped in brown paper. Her eyes widened. “Hello, sir.” She had the same voice as the woman who had spoken to him via tube. “I didn’t realize you were human. And so young. I could have arranged for more suitable styles—”

“It’s fine,” Isen said, extending his arm. He kept his body hidden behind the door for propriety.

She handed the parcel over and bowed her head. “Don’t hesitate to call again if you need anything.”

Isen smiled, then shut the door and sat on the bed. Tearing the paper revealed a pair of simple black pants that looked too long at a glance and a brocade tunic whose pattern reminded him of stylized fish scales.

He tried the pants on first. Way too long, but he could at least roll the ends or cut them with his knife. The pants were also slightly too big in the waist, but he could wash his leather belt and use it without too much trouble.

The shirt was loose, but the sleeves actually fell at the right point by his wrists if he rolled the cuffs once. It would do without any alterations.

After minor pant surgery—the hems looked less than stellar, but at least Isen could walk without tripping over fabric—he was finally ready to go.

Almost. He fastened the pin on his chest, since that was where most men wore it, and fastened Talis’s scarf around his head—a much easier task now that he had a mirror.

He thought that he almost looked like he fit in, if not for his one jarringly golden eye. He hoped that in a city full of powerful mages and cultivators, it wouldn’t be too much of an oddity. He supposed that he’d find out.

The final thing he did before leaving was hide the dagger in his white fur pack. The room came with a small safe, but Isen didn’t get a good feeling from it. He knew how easily determined thieves could circumvent standard locks, at least in Goldbounty. Maybe things were different in Eldrassin, but he didn’t want to take the risk. Instead, following the guidance of the sixth sense, he hid the bag in the washroom, under one of the towels. He hid the two other unused towels under the bed.

The bow and armor he left in a pile in the bedroom; while he cared about them, he didn’t think they would attract the attention of any unscrupulous figures. He had considered bringing small samples of the tier three monster silk and hide with him but decided against it for now. His goal for today was just to orient himself and get the lay of the land, not to actually sell anything. If he was lucky, Talis and Druinala might even have time to help him offload his valuables tomorrow, though he wouldn’t count on it.

Satisfied, and with half his money in a pouch on his belt, Isen set off on his first solo city adventure.

Chapter 44. Public Transit

​​When Isen emerged from the hotel, the sky was blue and the clouds sparse, giving him a clear view of the descending sun. He figured he had around two hours before night fell, not that the darkness would hinder him much.

As he took his first steps into the street, he hesitated. He had never claimed to know every inch of Goldbounty, but he knew the town probably better than he knew himself. Isen had become much more familiar with the sensation of being lost while in the depths, but what he felt now wasn’t lost, per se. Perhaps overwhelmed.

He took in a deep breath and held the air in his chest, cycling. With the exhale, he set off, retracing his steps earlier in the day.

Now that he was on his own, he slid back into old patterns. He kept a low, unassuming profile as he walked the streets, angling his head to hopefully conceal his golden eye beneath his bangs. He could understand snippets of conversation as he wandered, and however different the city appeared, its popular topics were nothing novel. Gossip, politics, minor complaints, even the weather.

Conspicuously absent from discussions were mentions of the queen’s death. It had been over a week since the event, but it would indelibly impact the lives of everyone in the city and kingdom.

The queen had founded Eldrassin. She was the tier four bastion protecting them from unseen threats, and the unifying force keeping the kingdom’s tier threes in check. With her gone, everything would change—unless she wasn’t gone, after all.

He cast all thoughts of Lumina Eldrassin and conspiracies from his mind. He was just a tier two, even if he was somewhat involved in this mess. There was a limit to what he could do, and agonizing over it wouldn’t help anything. He had his goals to get through.

Isen’s eyes drank in everything they could, but much in Eldrassin City remained alien. He could infer what some shops were by the wares in their windows, but others remained a mystery. There weren’t many animals on the streets, just the occasional beast of burden towing a wagon or cart. Most wagons moved on their own, however, ambient energy churning around a mechanism that twisted the wheels. Isen had asked about that on the way—apparently most self-propelled wagons were rented, rather than owned.

The people on the street seemed to be a mix of elves and half elves, with around a three-quarters half elf majority. Only a minority had pins, but even that was impressive. There were so many tier twos.

For the past year, alone in the depths, he had thought that maybe… he was actually strong. His might wasn’t comparable to Ros, of course, but against most monsters? He could hold his own. Compared to everyone in the land he’d grown up in, he was powerful.

Even in Shevenar, he had felt capable. Very few people there had been tier two. And now that he was in Eldrassin, he knew why.

All the tier twos were here.

Every normal-looking tier two that he passed on the street hammered home the idea that he wasn’t strong after all. Most of the tier twos looked ambiguously young, like Talis and Druinala, either because they were ageless elves or half elven cultivators with extended lifespans. Only a small number appeared to be middle aged, and he saw only one elderly tier two after fifteen minutes of walking.

None looked his age or younger. It made him feel a bit better about his own strength, but when everyone had hundreds of years to go from tier two to three, advancing to the hollow ring stage at a younger age seemed inconsequential. It’s not like cultivation was a sprint. He clearly wasn’t some… prodigy, like Ros seemed to think.

His mind also struggled to wrap around the idea that most pinned individuals were probably decades, if not centuries, older than he was. The oldest thing Isen had seen before he entered the depths was a gnarled old tree, sheltered from the harsh storms by two boulders. It hadn’t been particularly pretty—its only point of interest was its longevity. And it had seemed so, unfathomably old at the two hundred or so years often thrown around for its age.

Each pinned person on the street might be as old and wizened as that tree; maybe even older.

But he wasn’t really scanning the people on the streets for their pins. He was looking for people like himself—humans. He had yet to see a single one. Even if only a sliver of the Eldrassin population was human, a handful should live—or at least venture into—the primary level. He didn’t know how to get to the lower level, where the unpinned lived, but he moved going there up on his priority list.

After around thirty minutes of aimless walking, he went past an open-air shop with mostly empty tables and chairs. A pair of women sat at a bar counter in the back, and the smell of their food had wafted into the street.

The urge to enter seized him—he was hungry—but he hesitated. The interior was unlike any place he’d dined in before. It was refined, clean, and bright. It was so different from any restaurant he’d seen in Goldbounty.

He walked to the threshold. A half elf at a small podium smiled. He glanced between Isen’s face and the pin on his chest and his demeanor shifted almost imperceptibly. He stood up a bit straighter and bowed his head. “Welcome, young master, are you here to meet someone?” The man reached for a stiff, matte paper with writing on it. “Otherwise, we can prepare a table for you.”

Isen couldn’t read a single word. He plastered on a smile. “Just looking.” Before the man could reply, Isen turned expeditiously, merging with the increasing flow of traffic as evening approached.

Gods, he just felt so out of place. But he was determined to see the city on his own terms. He didn’t want a proper tour from Talis and Druinala, at least not yet.

His curiosity was piqued when a torrent of people rushed out from a structure on his right. It wasn’t even a proper building—he realized with a start that it housed twin sets of staircases that descended into the earth. He studied the flow of people and noticed that a minority were going against the tide, into the earth.

He followed them.

Like everything else he’d seen in the city, the stairs were clean and pale, even in the dimming light. As he turned the first corner of the right staircase, overhead ovular lanterns lit the way, casting the walls in a pale blue luminescence.

The staircase emerged into a long, thin room with benches. The other side of the room was visible, but inaccessible, separated by a several foot gap. Isen could jump it, but anyone unpinned probably couldn’t. The chamber narrowed to a tunnel at both ends.

The people he’d followed seemed content to sit on the benches or stand around, joining ten or so people who had already been loitering. None of them paid him notice, absorbed in their thoughts or conversing quietly with companions. One person was even reading a book.

They were clearly waiting for something. Probably whatever came through the tunnels. Maybe carriages?

Looking at the wall, Isen saw a glowing array of points, like a grid where every vertex glowed a different color. Up close, the points were incomprehensible, but when viewed from afar…

Isen took several steps back, nearing the benches. The lights clearly spelled out… something. There were three lines of elven sigils, each accompanied by a single number. The first one read “three.”

The sixth sense whispered of opportunity, so Isen waited. Half a minute later, the numbers on the wall changed, decrementing by one.

This happened each subsequent minute, until the first number went to zero. Then, the sounds of something approaching echoed in the tunnel.

Some people stood up from the benches; the lady reading the book put it back in her satchel. This all seemed completely routine to them.

Isen’s stomach clenched as the echoing sound grew louder, almost like the hiss of an arrow, but magnified many times over. He took a step back as the beast emerged, a segmented, worm-like creature with shining, glassy skin, its head completely covered by an enormous mask with an almost sinister countenance—a snarling wolf with sad eyes, like a cornered animal.

It was huge, around the same size as the tier three serpents that Isen had faced. That alone sent his heart racing. This thing wasn’t alive, was it? What were the people planning to do, flip the mask up and hop into its mouth?

When it came to a halt, an opening in each segment—wide enough for two people to stand shoulder-to-shoulder—folded down into a short ramp that connected to the ground. Blurred forms on the interior came into focus as they streamed out of the apertures, bustling past the other civilians to the chamber’s exit and the stairway to the surface.

Once everyone was off, the onlookers entered the worm’s body. It was so weird—Isen thought that Talis at least might have mentioned something about monsters ferrying people around underground.

He thought back to what Ros had told him about the tier four they’d killed. It had claimed that monsters could form oaths with more powerful people, entering servitude in exchange for cultivation support. Ros had guessed that the bear monster had entered such an oath before breaking through, explaining the tier four’s presence guarding the sanctum.

If this monster was alive—it had to be, right?—then maybe it was a tier three in service to Lumina Eldrassin… though that possibility sparked another question: what kept it subservient after her supposed death? Even if Lumina was in a quasi-alive state now, she’d been dead-dead for days.

Isen followed the stragglers onto the worm. The interior of his twenty-foot segment was pearlescent and hard, reminding him of the expensive shellfish Lady Jin would import from the coast. Parts of the walls were thinner than others, gently-curving rectangles spanning the entire length of the worm on both sides. It was almost like a window, but slightly cloudy. The ends of the segment were as translucent as the exterior, their blurs providing only a suggestion of the bodies that stood beyond.

Within Isen’s segment, most people stood, grasping onto silken tendrils that draped from the ceiling, while others leaned against the walls. Isen braced himself against the wall next to the door, ready to escape if anything unexpected occurred.

Only a few seconds after the last person boarded, the ramp folded up into alignment with the rest of the body. Isen snapped his hand away from the opening, glad that it hadn’t been crushed in the gap. The connection between the ramp and the wall was seamless, the ramp bending slightly to better fit the natural curvature. Only a small, dark seam marked it.

Then, the worm moved.

Chapter 45. City’s Center

Isen had only caught the tail end of the worm’s motion before, as it had been coming to a stop. Now, he watched in awe as the dimly lit rocks beyond the worm flew past. Soon after, the rock gave way to a sequence of murals. With the worm racing by them, the murals seemed to make a coherent moving scene.

It was genius, even if Isen didn’t understand why the mural was wasted on a bunch of elves drinking at a bar together, indecipherable sigils flickering above them over the course of the worm’s path.

The murals kept shifting until the worm slowed; then they gave way to the rock face once more. The worm shuddered to a stop, jolting its passengers. Isen was unbothered due to his superior cultivation, but he could see why the tier ones needed to hold the overhead tendrils to keep their balance.

The ramps descended again, and some passengers disembarked.

Not yet, he thought.

After the tenth moving mural, the allure wore off, and Isen took better notice of the others on the worm with him. He realized that many were sending glances his way. He’d always been sensitive to that sort of thing—it was a necessary instinct on the hard streets of Goldbounty. An instinctive fear grabbed him, one he had to tamp down on. Sticking out wasn’t the end of the world, not when he had the strength to defend himself from most people, even if he wasn’t strong enough to dominate all of them.

Still, he wanted to understand what drew attention. There were really only two things that should set him apart—his golden eye, and his pin combined with his age. His bet was on the latter. What had the half elf at the restaurant called him, young master?

Do they think I’m some important person’s scion? he wondered. Children with better resources and teachers probably advanced faster, and who would have better treatment than the children of the powerful? It made sense, even if it was the opposite of the truth in his case.

Assuming he was right about why people kept looking at him, he needed to decide if this was something he should address. Was it a bad thing that people assumed he was important?

He pondered the question for two more stops, when he finally decided to get off. He didn’t have an answer yet, but that was fine for now.

All the worm stops were similar in appearance—stark rooms with benches and stairways leading to the surface. A fleeting question of how he’d find his way back passed through Isen’s mind as he raced up the steps to the surface, but he figured that he’d find his way eventually, even if he had to ask people for directions.

He emerged into the busiest marketplace he’d ever seen in his life. Countless open-air stalls filled the space, with lanterns and braziers accompanying the onset of twilight. Thousands of people shuffled through the stalls.

From the periphery, he observed, focusing on the strength of his hollow ring stage senses. Ambient energy wafted through the crowds like a gentle zephyr. Scents of roasted meats were accompanied by the sweet aroma of what might be cider. An almost deafening chatter threatened to drown out a pair of musicians off to the edge of the market.

As he watched, he wondered with an increasing sense of foreboding how everyone could be so jubilant.

Their queen of thousands of years was gone, as far as they knew… right? Didn’t they know about the decimated elven towns within a few days of Eldrassin City’s walls?

Shouldn’t people be afraid?

Isen shook off his misgivings and detoured to the stall of a kebab vendor, paying with a few coppers. Isen was glad that Talis had agreed to exchange a silver for lesser change. While Isen didn’t know whether being a young, pinned individual was inherently bad, he was confident that people with too much money on them would be targets. If Isen paid for cheap street skewers with a silver, someone in the crowd would probably take notice. He’d wondered at the lack of criminal element by his hotel, but it made sense that thieves might try their luck in a more populated district.

As he moved through the crowd, he took another tally, counting the ratio of pinned to unpinned. Unpinned made up the vast majority, and among their number, he finally spotted a group of humans. He only noticed because one of them left her ears uncovered; the rest all wore concealing scarves. He almost hadn’t believed it at first, so he’d walked close enough to overhear their conversation.

The sound of common had been rapturous. Finally, here was proof that he wasn’t alone in the world, that the Twining’s tear hadn’t sent him to an entirely different world rather than a different continent. Maybe it was silly to feel that way, childish. Isen didn’t know.

He thought about approaching the human group, but held back. What would he even say?

Instead, he made a game of spotting the pickpockets. He found one almost immediately and followed her motions through the crowd, keeping her in his peripheral vision. The woman was unpinned, and never approached those above her level.

That seemed like an intelligent choice, given what Isen knew about his own capabilities before and after breaking through.

Just because Isen only saw an unpinned pickpocket didn’t mean that there weren’t ones at his own tier, so he remained vigilant as he ate through the four kebabs he’d bought. He hadn’t recognized the name of the meat, but it tasted good. Much better than monster meat and an improvement on the road rations.

Suddenly, a beast the size of a small dog but with smooth, blue-gray skin and a head that was mostly sharp-toothed mouth, bounded beside him. He nearly backhanded it in shock. It stared at him with thin, crescent-moon eyes and jumped onto its back feet. Isen tossed the empty skewers and the beast snatched the sticks up, swallowing them whole. Satisfied, it walked away, taking a few steps before melting into the cracks in the stone.

Nobody reacted to the display. Frowning, Isen studied the crowd again. He realized that most people just dropped their trash onto the ground the second they were done with it. Rather than the littering causing a mess, the trash just seemed to disappear.

Magical trash hounds, he mused.

He was curious what else the open-air market had to offer. As a town frequented by merchants and traders, including people from faraway lands, Goldbounty had always had all sorts of interesting and exotic goods. Since it was all Isen had ever known, he’d become inured to it, even if he knew, logically, that most settlements couldn’t boast the same.

He’d never seen any elves in Goldbounty, of course, so there might be items only found in the Elven Lands here. Isen had only seen Shevenar for a few hours before its ruination, and that hadn’t been enough to give him a good baseline. Still, even the small shop where he’d sold his monster materials had possessed an appraisal kit, and that had seemed wondrous.

What other magical items might the market possess? And what incredible things might he be able to find in specialized shops elsewhere in the city?

You’re just looking for today, he reminded himself. No impulse buys.

He froze when he encountered a stall with bottles of mystic-looking pills. The stall was filled with crates of them all stacked in the back, their fronts open to reveal their contents. Some pills glowed in bright hues unlike any Isen had seen in nature, while others were covered in strange patterns. The most popular variant—with several bottles stretched out in a line on the front counter—looked like beans covered in swirling plum-colored paint and flecked with gold foil. Isen had no idea what the pills were since he couldn’t read any of the signage, but just the idea of ostensibly magical pills—ones that might help his cultivation—being available so freely…

Isen couldn’t remember ever seeing real pills, the kind made with genuine pill furnaces. People knew the stories about pills, that taking them could make you stronger. They were therefore incredibly valuable and a prime target for theft. Either caravans hid them well, or they didn’t bring them at all, and they would certainly never sell them in a backwater like Goldbounty.

Furnaces, on the other hand, were valuable, but also useless to most. Isen had always associated them with mages, up until seeing the cultivator woman using the pill furnace on the Twining.

Isen wanted pills, but more than that… he was interested in getting a furnace of his own. He knew the sixth sense helped him pick up skills faster than most people and might assist him in pill concocting.

He searched for the better part of an hour but didn’t find any pill furnace vendors. He figured he’d probably need to find a specialized shop. He did, however, find a vendor that sold pre-made leather and cloth armor. He’d been confused about how that would work—didn’t the armor need to be fitted to the individual?—but apparently the vendor’s armor was all enchanted to automatically fit a person’s body, within reason. He watched as someone bought a pair of rugged cloth bracers that looked too big, only to have them shrink to fit onto her forearms.

Before he knew it, over an hour had passed and he’d reached the other side of the market—and a broad road filled with passersby. The sun was low in the sky, but the streets were illuminated by small lanterns that hung from buildings, barely noticeable during the day.

After walking a few blocks, he realized that he had definitely entered a more central part of the city. The buildings were taller, and many were made from weathered stone blocks. They looked ancient and he imagined that they’d stood for centuries—or possibly since the city’s founding.

He noticed that many people were leaving what was easily the largest building on the block, a temple matching the presence of the obsidian Compass of Legacy in the depths. It was hard to tell at dusk, but it looked as though carved from a single block of white stone.

As Isen approached, he realized the buildings didn’t just match the Compass of Legacy’s grandeur—it was intentionally mimicking its façade. Tall pillars, an arching dome, stairs stretching horizontally all across the temple’s front—it was impossible to miss.

Lumina Eldrassin must have had a hand in this building’s construction, Isen noted. He approached the steps, appreciating that they were sized for normal people, rather than the massive, several-feet-tall steps outside the Compass of Legacy.

The building’s front was covered in doors rather than just the Compass’s single entrance. From afar, they had appeared dark and opaque, but up close Isen could see behind them, as though they were made from tinted glass.

He pushed the double doors open and entered a room with a ceiling that crested twenty feet overhead. The floor was made from white marble, and all around him…

Were books.

Chapter 46. The Library

Books and books and books on shelves stacked to the ceiling, winding like a maze through the building’s massive interior. The shelves themselves were like walls, sectioning off the space into separate rooms.

Isen had thought that the sanctum was incredible for the knowledge it contained. And it probably was—the books a powerful tiered person might store in a secret lair were probably more important than average books in Eldrassin City’s library.

But gods, how could so many books exist in one place? Isen could only think of what might happen if someone destroyed the building. Protective magics must exist to avert disaster, but even so. Did they keep additional copies in some other archive?

He almost missed the long counter about twenty paces in front of him.

He hesitated to approach the people at the desk. Normally he’d wait to see how other people acted, but nobody was by the counter nearby.

He sighed inwardly and steeled himself. He wasn’t here to be a fly on the wall—this was exactly the place he’d been looking for. He needed information.

A half elven woman glanced up at him from behind the counter as he approached. She was bent over, rifling through books in a bin. “The library is closing in ten minutes,” she said, distracted. Isen noticed that other half elves down the line were busy cleaning up. “Can I help you?”

Ten minutes wasn’t a lot to work with—he might have to come back tomorrow. He decided to be direct with what he needed. “I’m looking for a book on the elven written language, one written in common.”

That got her attention. She blew her auburn bangs out of her eyes and stood up, finally giving him a good look. Her eyes rested on his pin, then on his face, and her demeanor changed. She gave him a wide smile. “Ah, young master. Of course I can help you. If I may ask, what motivates this research? I’ll be able to assist you better if I understand your intentions.”

He considered being honest, but… for the sake of keeping things simple, he skewed the truth. “I’m helping a human refugee to learn the elven language.”

The woman’s eyes widened. “Oh, how generous.”

Isen inwardly cringed at the fawning treatment, but if it got him a book today rather than tomorrow, he’d take it. “Do you have any relevant materials?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said, still smiling, to the extent that it was obviously forced. “We have a human section.” She pushed on the desk, causing a section to fold outward so she could leave her post. “Follow me.”

Questions bubbled up, begging for release, but he kept quiet. He didn’t think a “young master” would ask questions about how old the library was, how many books it held, how the librarian effortlessly knew which labyrinthine shelf-corridors to turn down…

Soon, the woman stopped before a set of shelves, pointing to a sign. “See? The human section.”

Isen just nodded as if the sign wasn’t in gibberish.

She stepped in front of the shelf and pursed her lips, then tapped her foot twice on the marble. Suddenly, the marble glowed in a faint outline around her and she started ascending, leaving a dark square of missing floor behind her.

Isen figured he could wait for her to return, but he couldn’t contain his excitement. She was practically flying! It was completely different from the lift they’d taken to get to Eldrassin City from the wall. That had been a large platform powered directly by mages. This was a tiny piece of rock that flew up on its own accord.

He walked up to the missing piece of floor and noticed several tiny inscriptions. Was every piece of the floor like that?

He tapped his foot twice on the section of floor just to the right. It didn’t glow, and he felt silly for trying. He looked up at the tiny form of the librarian. She ran her finger along a row of book spines, occasionally pulling one out to flip through it. After gathering four, she descended. The stone lift slotted gracefully back into its original spot, depositing the librarian on the ground.

“Can only librarians use the lifts?” Isen asked. He thought it might be a stupid question, but his curiosity outweighed his dedication to his façade.

“Anyone who has a library token and a lift pass can use one. You should have the latter already—and if you don’t have a library token, I can set you up with one today.”

He smiled. A lift pass—one more thing he needed to look into. “Thank you.”

She then held up her armful of books. “Would you like a moment to look through?”

“Sure.”

She handed him the first book, a thin volume filled with pictures. It was clearly for a young child, though it did appear to have explanations of elven sigils written out. Still, it seemed a bit too simplistic.

“Not what you’re looking for?” Her smile was warmer now, tinged with humor.

Isen let out a small chuckle. “That obvious?” He handed the book back in exchange for another. This one was written in miniscule letters. He wondered how people without enhanced perception could read it. It seemed to be a dictionary mapping common words to elven ones.

He handed it back. The next book was very short, but it was exactly what he wanted. It seemed to be a more scholarly text and included an introduction on the elven language, along with a breakdown of the different sigils, their meanings, and information on pronunciation and the etymology of words.

It was honestly a bit daunting—he’d never read such a high-level text before—but it excited him.

“This is perfect,” he said, but still handed the book back to inspect the last one of the four. This was a workbook of exercises, with instructions to write elven sigils.

He glanced at her. “How could something like this be in a library?”

She laughed nervously. “Young master, it’s been enchanted. Just activate the rune on the back cover and all non-original contents will be wiped.”

Isen flinched. Based on her reaction, that was something he should have already known. He smiled. “Ah, I didn’t realize a book written in common would have something like that,” he said. He didn’t really need to—it didn’t ultimately matter if he perfectly maintained his role at this point. Still, he didn’t like making a fool of himself.

His response elicited another laugh. “We added it, of course,” she said.

Isen couldn’t tell if he was digging himself into a deeper hole or not, so he stopped. “I’ll take this workbook, the previous book, and the dictionary.”

The librarian promptly tossed the two unneeded books. Rather than tumbling to the ground, they floated upwards before inserting themselves back on the shelf.

He blinked.

“Let’s get you checked out,” she said, leading him back to the entrance. “If I might ask, where are you from?”

“The south,” he said. It was a terrible answer—Eldrassin City was the most northern city in all the Elven Lands. He wondered if it was his accent or his ignorance that gave him away. It was one more thing he’d need to discuss with Talis and Druinala if he was to continue with his façade as a half elf.

***

Isen hadn’t had a bag to keep the books in, but the obsequious librarian had given him one free of charge, a linen tote that he slung over his shoulder.

When he returned outside, the moon shone brightly, casting the streets in an almost ethereal glow. Isen paused at the sight, realizing that the stone the pale streets and many buildings were made from was faintly luminescent.

He looked down at his breast and realized that his pin also glowed a deep crimson. If anything, it was even more obvious at night than during the day. Looking around at the busy thoroughfare, he went with the flow of traffic in the opposite direction from which he’d originally come.

It took him two hours to find his way back to the hotel. He’d noticed the faint call of opportunity in other directions, but had ultimately ignored them. He could follow those trails tomorrow, ideally after learning how to at least recognize basic elven writings. He figured that being able to read the changing signs in the worm station—the transit schedule—would help immensely.

The first thing he did was ensure that everything in his room was as he’d left it. Having confirmed the safety of his belongings, he carefully placed the books onto his bed, overcome by a sudden feeling of deja vu.

Suddenly, it was as though he were back in his room in Lady Jin’s mansion—or what he’d thought was a mansion at the time, though compared to the elven residences, it was more like an above-average house. It was the only place in the world he’d ever had access to books, at least those in a language he could read—until now.

He took in a deep, surprisingly cathartic breath, and opened the book with the academic bent. At first, making sense of the dense paragraphs was almost agonizing. He kept re-reading sentences, struggling with unfamiliar technical jargon.

“There should be a better way to do this—a smarter way,” he muttered to himself, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully. He was reading the book with a very specific purpose: to learn the elvish written language.

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He cultivated for a few minutes to center himself, then returned his focus to the book. Rather than reading all the words and trying to understand everything, he tried to perceive beyond them.

He tried to sense what was useful.

Suddenly, the task of reading the book became easier. His eyes skimmed the text, and he only slowed down on parts that he thought were important. Just a year ago, he wouldn’t have trusted the almost non-existent feeling enough to read a book this way, but he’d learned to follow the sixth sense’s most subtle urgings out of necessity while in the depths.

While dense, the book was short, so Isen skimmed through in less than an hour. He opened up the workbook, only to realize he didn’t have a writing utensil, but that was fine for now. He didn’t plan on writing anything in elvish in the near future, just reading sigils.

The elvish writing system wasn’t fully phonetic. Conjugations and object modifiers, like plurals, just weren’t represented. Context was key to understanding what was written. For instance, a sentence might be written like, “He walk to three shop,” but pronounced in Eldrassin like, “He walked to three shops.” Even the “to” in the first sentence wasn’t really a to, but a dedicated marker that indicated an action toward or affecting something else. There was also a particle added onto the end of the written sentence, one that wasn’t pronounced and only indicated that the sentence was in past tense.

Apparently, elvish dialects like Onyssian and Eldrassin were similar enough that they could use the same spellings for most words, but conjugations, plurals, and other syntactical pieces differed. Those were the elements that had been extracted out of the written language and replaced.

While not being fully phonetic meant Isen would be in trouble if asked to read out loud a sentence written in elvish, if he just needed to understand a sentence’s meaning, he would probably be fine.

Satisfied with his progress, he sat on the ground and cycled again. He was on the cusp of forming another ring to fill his hollow core.

A few hours later, his efforts were rewarded. His seventh ring solidified.

Isen sighed and stood up, stretching. Suddenly, he heard a knock on his door. He walked to the threshold and pressed his ear to the wood. “Who is it?”

“Allezin. We need to talk.”

Isen pulled the door ajar, inviting the tier three inside.

The elf wrinkled his nose. “It’s pitch black in here.” The warrior walked to the window and pulled the drape aside, letting in moonlight. He was dressed in his dark armor, the helmet hanging from his belt.

Isen closed the door and crossed his arms. “Why are you here? Did something happen?”

Allezin chuckled mirthlessly. “Our little lady is safe and attended to by another bearer of fire. But we have other business at hand.”

Isen just stared at him.

“It’s time to pay Welco the Haunt a visit.”