She only blinked before walking off, Reed's floating body in tow.
Silence seized the crowd, and Felix leveled his gaze all around him. He could feel it blaze, crackling with blue lightning. "This is over. Go."
None protested. In seconds, the marketplace-turned-arena had transmogrified back into a silent field of dusty stone.
Later, Felix watched the sun sink closer and closer to the western mountains, small as they were. As early as it was in autumn, the light was still warm and plentiful, though he'd felt an occasional chill in the breeze. A harbinger of things to come.
He had let his friends do their jobs, leading the various groups to their assigned housing. Felix had made sure to build enough housing, crude as his workings often were; the Henaari were good with making things more homey, at least. With Vess and the Synod's help, he'd even done some rudimentary city-planning. All the stone and wooden houses now made proper streets and pathways throughout his Stronghold.
So now everyone was settling in or doing one of the myriad jobs their settlement required. From hunting to gathering and planting in his underground Garden, a facet of his Stronghold he had not spent much time within. Quests were still being accomplished, the standing order of materials and information feeding back into his Resource menus. Aside from his repeated failures with alchemy, things were looking good. Not "stand up to a foreign invasion" good, but decent enough.
Meanwhile, Felix had retreated from everyone else. After that little showing, he had felt the fear spinning untamed in the people's Spirits. Fear of him. It wasn't a new sensation, but it made him uncomfortable every time; even if it was well-deserved. He looked at his handsfully human ones nowand at his unmarked Garment. It had torn when the Hand had attacked him with those blades of air Mana, but the thing had repaired itself quickly. Now he wore a long-sleeved tunic with an asymmetrical collar he could prop up against the wind. He might not be affected by the cold, but he could still feel it in a sense, and he was a Florida boy. Cold wasn't his favorite. But the Garment and his skin beneath, they were leagues above where he had been only a few short months before...he'd beaten the Hand! That felt a little unreal, considering how long he'd worried about that guy gutting him for giving Vess the wrong sorta look.
But now what? Would the man be fine after he woke? Or would he rage about the loss? Felix hadn't a firm enough grasp on the Hand's personality to tell, and Vess had disappeared with all the newcomers so he hadn't been able to ask. He knew he should go and track Zara down, confront her about the Mark she'd left on him, or ask what the Cantus Sodalus was, or any number of responsible, leader-type things. Instead, he sat silent atop the Temple cliffclose enough to the waterfall to feel its light spray and far enough to not be entirely embroiled in its thundering cacophony. Curiously, as his Perception advanced it grew not only more sensitive but more exactly and malleable. He could, if he wished, block out the noise of the waterfall entirely and focus on the other sounds around himself. Felix had played with that aspect of his stats in the past, but as the hours passed into late afternoon, he simply sat there. Taking it all in.
He still heard the footsteps behind him, of course. He wasn't deaf.
"You're lookin' right sad," said a sharp, familiar voice. Felix turned, truly surprised.
"Rafny? I didn't know you were coming too."
A dark-haired Dwarf stood several strides away, arms akimbo. "One of us had to, you big lug. Establishing a Stronghold and a Forge and you didn't tell us? Elle was in fits, I can tell you." She peered at his face. "You don't look much like a monster."
Felix laughed. "That's just my....battleform. No, I'm not calling it that." He waved his hand. "Uh, my transformation. I can't keep it going too long. Burns up a lot of energy."
"Naw, not what I mean. Though that bulk is somethin' impressive, for sure," she said, walking closer and peering uncomfortably at the cliff's edge. "Everyone down there is hootin' and hollerin' about the Fiend. The Fiend and the Night Of A Thousand Lights. The Fiend and the Endless Fog. The Fiend and the Ice Witch. The stories they tell..." she chuckled nervously before backing from the drop. "They paint you up a great deal. The Ferocious Fiend."
Felix hadn't heard any of those stories before, but he could probably guess the contents of most of them. He shook his head. "I'm just me. Been through a bit, but"
"You're more than that to them, I'd say," Rafny jerked her chin toward the ledge. "They're afraid of you."
Felix sighed. "I know. I try to counteract it, but everything I do just feeds the flames."
"Oh, you misjudge me," the Smith said. She tested her weight against a small boulder nearby, half-grown over by tufts of stringy weeds. "It's good. It's a solid thing, fear. Keeps them in line, especially those Frost Giants. That was a bit of a surprise." She laughed. "But they way they looked at you. Like a Primordial come alive."
"Hm," he said. "If I'm going to lead them in any capacity, I'd rather they respect me than fear me."
"Bah, respect is fear given time enough to hew off the edges. Let em sit in the fire a bit, soften em up before you take the hammer and shape em. Yeah?"
Felix laughed. "You've got a way with words. Anyone ever tell you that?"
Rafny grinned. "Not ever. So!" She clapped her hands loudly together. "You gonna show me that Forge, or what?"
"All this, so you could angle for access to my Forge?" Felix stood. "Shameless Dwarf."
"Fool Human," she shot back, eyeing the cliff uncertainly. "Stop playing on the edge of things. You make me nervous. I came up to see the Forge, and you. Figured I'd need your permission before I could get near the thing. The Alchemist is probably mustering the guts to do the same thing."
"Oh, nope. I mean, yes, but you can also ask Harn. He's the Forgemaster now," Felix said. "Wait, Alchemist? Aenea is here too?
"She and her husband took ship the moment Cal put out the word. Somethin' about a 'treasure trove of alchemical reagents' in the Foglands." Rafny raised an eyebrow. "And Harn's your Forgemaster? He and I should have words, then."
Felix closed his mouth, and quelled the rising excitement in his guts before gesturing ahead of himself. "I'll lead the way, then."