The mind-reading moment sits in the room.
Cresty gulped. She had heard the rumors of how powerful The Eye was and how she expected him to be. Yet, mind-reading was not on her list of traits.
"I can," said The Eye. "So there is no need for nervousness."
"I..." Who wouldn't be nervous standing in front of you?
"I've tried making this room as calming as possible, but it seems my reputation, or should I say, the opinion of others of me still precedes me," said The Eye before continuing. "Regarding Lexel Torga, would you be so kind as to keep a close eye on him? You'll be my eye, would you not?"
Cresty's pupils dilated a bit, "As in?"
"Whatever information that you have on him must only be shared in this private channel between us," said The Eye. "That means not even the guild, nor Fallas, nor the upper echelon of this guild of mine should know."
Cresty raised her brows. Things had escalated to something she had not anticipated.
"Stay close to Lexel," the Eye said. "Not as an Emperor's Eye operative. Not as a recruiter. Simply — close." A pause. "The notion of bringing him into the guild — release it. He is not recruitable. He would have joined if he wanted to. He didn't want to."
"I..."
"Of course, this is a choice," said The Eye. "I'm not forcing you to take part in this. Say the rejection, and you shall forget this meeting ever happened."
He... he could erase my memories?!
The Eye responded to nothing to her thought.
"I..." Cresty gulped, "Can I at least ask why you want information on Lexel?"
"Fair enough," said The Eye. "As a precaution, a help, a definition of character? Or simply, I just want to get to know him."
"Are you going to harm him?" asked Cresty.
"Hmm? Have you taken a liking to the boy?" The Eye teased.
"Wha? I do not!" Cresty shook her head with a flush on her cheeks.
"Then, what is your answer?" asked The Eye.
"I..." Cresty pondered, many thoughts dancing in her mind. The weirdness of it all, Lexel's incredible talent, the way the word fear held no meaning. He stood proud and calm, his heart skipped when he was excited, never in cower. She wanted to know more of his origins, of his background, the self-claimed royalty. "I will."
"Good."
"How will I reach you?" asked Cresty.
The Eye throws something from his pocket. Gleaming against the light, it was a ring with a beautiful jade gem.
Cresty's eyes shrank before she caught it. She looked at the ring on her palm. "Is this?"
"A spatial ring," said The Eye. "Put it on."
Cresty did as she was told. Then she could see what's inside that others could not. A three-by-three grid with nine slots. Each slot contained T-Cards.
"Now then, begone," The Eye waved his hand, and Cresty disappeared.
The ordinary face. The ordinary presence. The carefully calibrated unremarkability of something that had been performing a specific kind of invisibility for a specific audience and no longer needed to perform it.
The performance releases.
Not dramatically — the way performances release when they're no longer required. The specific ease of something letting go of a shape it was holding. The ordinary face shifting. The ordinary clothes — the unremarkable colors, the forgettable cut — dissolving into something else, something that moved differently than fabric moved, something that settled around a form that was no longer presenting itself as ordinary.
An oversized hood. Dark. The kind of dark that wasn't the absence of light so much as the presence of something that didn't want to be seen and had the means to ensure it wasn't. It covered everything. No face visible. No hands. No outline of what was underneath — just the hood, and the presence it contained, and the room that had been ordinary a moment ago and was now something else entirely.
The hooded figure sat where the ordinary person had sat.
In the room that showed nothing outside its window.
---
Fallas's office. The familiar desk. The familiar smell. Fallas at the window with his back to the room, looking at the capital below with the expression of someone who had been standing in that position for a while and had not moved because moving felt like it would require acknowledging something.
He heard her arrive. Turned.
Looked at her. At her expression — the rising star of Emperor's Eye, the operative he had recruited and developed and was confident in, standing in his office with the specific expression of someone who has just been somewhere and met someone and is not going to tell him about either.
He said nothing. Because Fallas, who had been running this branch for long enough to have built a comprehensive model of most situations, had just spent however long at the window understanding that there was a ceiling above his ceiling, and the person who had just come back through it was not going to tell him what was on the other side of it, and asking was not going to change that.
"Are you alright?" Cresty asked.
"Yes," Fallas said.
Cresty looked at the T-Card in her hand — the second one, the reporting card, the direct channel to the Eye. She closed her hand around it. Didn't show it to Fallas. Didn't mention it.
"I'm going back to the party," she said.
"Yes," Fallas said. Still the window.
She left.
---
Beneath a heavy, soot-stained timber roof, a brick forge glows with a steady, pulsing crimson heat, its bellows sighing softly with every breath of wind from the gardens. An massive iron anvil, scarred by countless hammer strikes, sits firmly embedded in a thick oak stump at the center of the earthen floor, flanked by racks of neatly arranged tongs, ball-peen hammers, and half-finished blades. The sharp, metallic tang of hot iron mixes with the sweet scent of nearby blooming jasmine, creating a strange harmony between the brutal artistry of the forge and the refined elegance of the estate just a few paces away.
Anthierin wiped her sweat before she saw the door open. Her eyes showed no delight at the figure coming in.
"What are you doing here, hypergamist?" asked Anthierin.
Mera stood in the doorway.
The Baroness of Einjaar. Kain's fiancée — former fiancée, as of this morning, as of the arena, as of the specific moment when the formal combat reached its conclusion and the engagement dissolved along with everything else that had depended on Kain being alive.
Anthierin's hand clutched tightly to her hammer.
"I'm not here to fight," Mera said.
"Then you picked the wrong room," Anthierin said.
Mera stepped inside. Not far — the doorway distance of someone who had decided to enter and had not decided how far entering went. She looked at the forge. At the tools. At the anvil. At Anthierin, who had not moved and whose hand was still on the hammer.
"I want to bury the hatchet," Mera said.
Anthierin looked at her.
"The night in Einjaar," Mera said. "The aphrodisiac. Kain." She said each thing with the flat delivery of someone listing items on an accounting ledger — things that had happened, things that had had costs, things that were now in the past and required addressing before the future could be organized properly. "I'm not going to apologize for wanting Lexel. I'm going to acknowledge that the method was—" a pause, choosing, "—poorly considered."
"Poorly considered," Anthierin repeats. The specific tone of someone who had just heard an understatement so significant it required a moment.
"I also," Mera continues, without flinching, "want to acknowledge that because of me— because of that night — You got to lock Lexel instead of me." She looked at Anthierin directly. The cold survival behind her eyes was running at the specific temperature it ran at when she had decided something and was saying it. "So. In a specific sense. You owe me."
Anthierin looked at her for a long moment.
At the composed face. At the woman who had arranged a poisoning and a murder attempt on the same night and was standing in her smithing room, calling it poorly considered and saying she owed her for it. The hammer hand didn't move.
"You have a lot of nerve," Anthierin said. "You think I'm like you?!" She let go of the hammer and picked up the sword she's been farming for EXP.
Mera was backed to the wall; she gulped. "I-In a sense, yeah."
"What did you say?!" She approached her with the gleaming crimson blade that raised the temperature of the room.
"Don't tell me you didn't like it," said Mera before the sword pointed at her neck. "Being dominated by a man of such prowess. Not status, but pure raw power. Something that not even Kain possessed."
"That's none of your business!" she choked her with her warm glove.
However, Mera kept her smile, "Y-You're strong, Anthierin, no..." she smirked.
"Step-sister."
Anthierin's breath was pulled away as her pupils trembled.