Ryn of Avonside

“I am Eilian the Golden, and this is Rynadria of Avonside,” said my friend, her metallic eyes sparkling as she watched the man that Sabu had called, Lord Narseh. “In addition, we have Ambassador Ross, also of Avonside.”

Lord Narseh listened politely while she spoke, then brushed a hand through the long flop that sprouted from the top of his head. Weirdly, any and all strands that had been out of place quickly fell back in line, until his style was immaculate.

“Avonside,” he mused, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “I believe I've heard of it. A report came across my desk just three days ago, actually. A magistrate from further upriver sent it. You are the group hoping to begin diplomatic relations with our vast empire?”

Dr. Ross cleared his throat. “Yes. That's us, actually. The Pherih here have been very kind in speaking to us about various… possibilities.”

Lord Sabu, who was still visibly seething over Lord Narseh’s interruption, said, “Yes. We offered to take them in under our family, since we already have a bounty of experience managing rural towns.”

Lord Narseh snorted and shot the other man an amused look. “Sabu, this is no simple rural village — growing mountain vegetables and picking scraps of iron ore from a riverbed.”

“I gathered that,” Sabu said through clenched teeth.

Ignoring him, Lord Narseh turned his attention back to Dr. Ross. “What manner of relationship was Avonside hoping to foster with us?”

“Mutually beneficial…” Dr. Ross said with a cautious glance towards Sabu. “...and independent.”

Lord Narseh regarded him with a very slight smile. “I see. You know, I think that as the world currently stands, my uncle might very well be amenable to such an arrangement.”

Nofrei winced, and Lord Sabu fell still, a look of frustration flashing briefly across his expression.

“Your… uncle?” Dr. Ross prodded hesitantly.

“The Emperor, of course,” said the young, self assured lord with a grin.

Oh. Shit. So Nofrei and her family were small fry compared to this dude. Maybe this was just the ‘in’ we needed, though…

“Well then, that's rather impressive,” Dr. Ross laughed earnestly. “You certainly have the bearing of royalty. Forgive my ignorance, we're new here… what… well, who is the Emperor? What lineage is he from?”

“We are proud Sarcids,” Lord Narseh smiled amicably. “As for our family name, we're the Mithradans. Records in the Lineage Archives indicate that our ancestors were kings, back before the Ring.”

Dr. Ross looked genuinely interested now. “I believe we have records to that effect too. I'd be more than happy to get you some copies of what we have.”

“There's a whole medical practice named after a king like that, I think,” Duncan said hesitantly. “The poison one.”

Nofrei, and to a lesser extent Sabu, reacted very oddly to that. The latter looked almost hungrily at Duncan, but our new mage friend looked a little worried.

Lord Narseh just continued to survey us with that oddly calm smile on his face. “Oh really? I'm sure the family scribes would be desperately interested in your records. Me, though… What does this medical practice entail?”

The way he spoke made me think that there were like, assassins hiding in the gorgeous gardens around us, ready to jump out and fill us with metal if we said the wrong thing. The feeling was so strong that I actually looked around with mage sight. There were a few enchanted things around, and a gardener was busy tending to a vine a ways away, but no armed baddies were immediately visible.

Duncan, looking properly uncomfortable, murmured, “Oh, it's more of a concept, really. You can gain resistance to some types of poison by imbibing low doses of the stuff. Your body learns to deal with them, like uh… like how you train with wooden swords instead of metal ones.”

Narseh was quiet for a couple seconds, nodding to himself. “Interesting, most interesting. That actually lines up with our oldest records on the subject. Good thing it isn’t our current recipes.”

“Indeed,” Dr. Ross said neutrally.

“The Mithradans are very

The professor laughed his usual, gentle laugh. “Oh, don’t worry. We are very familiar with the concept of intellectual property…”

That was the moment that I realised I was not cut out for political talk. Like, the tension combined with the sheer boring content of what was being discussed was too much for me. It wasn’t that long ago that I was basically allergic to conflict, and here I was doing high stakes small-talk.

As I only half listened, I noticed movement on the next balcony up. At first I thought it was just some foliage shifting in the breeze, but then it moved again, resolving into a head. The head quickly disappeared beyond the lip of the other balcony.

“Sorry, I need to check up on something. I'll be right back,” I said to everyone and nobody in particular, and with a swirl of vine-like tattoos, I folded spacetime and teleported.

Landing on the upper balcony, I looked around until I saw the figure, who was busy writing in a notebook. It took me a second to really compute the figure properly, because my brain kept running into parts of them that didn't add up.

Their head was not shaped properly. It wasn't human, or at least, not a type of human that I was familiar with outside of like, anime. Actually, that was kinda the general vibe of this person — they had the proportions of an anime character. An anime that held truer to the physiology of a human, sure, but that still meant their head was very round on top, while the chin was eerily pointed.

The rest of their body was slender, but vaguely masculine, if I could stick human characteristics to what was very obviously not. Their neck in particular looked like it might be ready to snap, it was so thin, except for the soft, wiry muscle there. I initially thought they were wearing a full body suit, but then I realised that it was their skin — a deep, navy blue that was so soft and smooth that it resembled the sky at the very end of the day. Their actual clothing was a set of dark purple robes with silver accents.

The moment I took a step towards them, their head whipped around to stare at me with large eyes, and a set of long pointed ears that could somehow swivel slightly and focus on me.

“You're an elf,” I muttered in English, completely baffled by this person.

They stared at me for a second longer, with an unsettling intensity, until suddenly they moved again, whipping up a hand. Out of a gourd at their hip, a long streamer of water floated. Abruptly, it picked up speed and raced to form a glob in the air in front of them.

Instinctively, I threw up a shield of hardened magenta light.

Nothing hit it, though. The glob of water instead froze slowly into a gorgeous snowflake pattern, but large enough to see and hold. At some point during this odd process, the elf had closed their eyes, but they opened with a snap as the crystal finished forming. Then, as fast as it had created it, the elf quickly stored it in a pouch at their waist.

“Hello,” they finally said in Ghraial.

Tentatively shifting the shield so I could see them properly, I replied, “Hello. Who are you? Why were you spying?”

“Spying?” They asked, frowning just slightly. “No, I was observing. Attempting to gain data.”

“Okay… that sounds like spying?”

If I could attribute human emotion to this alien person, I would say their face took on a mild, dignified sort of chagrin. “My intent was not malicious. I’m trying to increase my repertoire. To that end, if you’re amenable, I’d like to take some samples of this shield for my memory.”

I glanced at my shield, now completely and utterly baffled. “Um… if you promise to not do anything to me, and to answer any of my questions…”

Their face moved again, shifting into— yeah, that was definitely a reserved smile. “I can do that.”

“Cool, then yeah, take a… sample. What’s this for?”

Hopping lithely over a bench and approaching my shield, they pulled out a tape measure. “Are you familiar with the realm that holds memory and water as its domains?”

“Um… no,” I said, completely confused by this odd individual.

Using fingers that were thin and obviously as strong as woven steel cable, they pulled their tape measure out and began to quickly jot down the exact dimensions of my shield.

Once they were done with the tape measure, they eyed me critically for almost five very awkward seconds. As if finally deciding something, their brows unknit slightly and they said, “Well, I am a mage of that realm. We capture our memories, copy them into water crystal, then prune and define them until they are castable as a spell. To do such a thing with any phenomenon of an arcane nature, one must be exceptionally precise, or risk the spell being cast with unpredictable consequences.”

“Oh,” I said. It made sense why they’d be interested in my shield, then. It was a pretty cool spell. “Okay then, next question… why are you here, peering at us?”

They slowed to a stop halfway through matching my shield’s colour to a series of swatches in a small binder. With a tilt of the head in the direction of the political gathering, they said, “Nofrei is a friend— acquaintance. She owed me a favour, and when she met a whole host of interesting new people… well…”

“That’s… I don’t know how to feel about that, other than it makes me uncomfortable,” I said.

They made a thoughtful noise and paused to make unerring, unblinking eye contact. After a couple of seconds, they went back to gathering information about my shield. “I apologise. Thank you for this opportunity. If I can recreate your spell, I will feel much safer.”

I almost explained that the shield spell was built to be cast quickly, and various other technical things, but decided that I'd given away enough of my secrets to this person.

A couple of moments later, and they stepped back. “Thank you again. Now, although you haven't asked it, I feel I would not be an honourable man if I did not warn you — the winds of fate blow foul in this empire. I fear a putrid storm rests just beyond the horizon. Be wary, stay safe.”

Then, ‘he?’ was walking away, back through the rooftop garden. The sun was high and warm, but I felt a shiver run up my spine as I thought about his warning. Me too, my guy, I could feel the faintest undercurrent of bad vibes.