Chapter One Hundred and Ninety Two - 192"Can you believe it?" Evie said as they burst from the smithy's door. "An entire Territory, all on the same Quest! Never seen it before!"
Felix and Evie raced across the courtyard. They had to weave through the crowd, many of whom were clumped in tight groups, each discussing the new Territory-wide Quest with varying amounts of dread. Snippets of their conversations drifted through his Perception.
"A Nest? How will we survive...?"
"...we have to fight them? All of em?"
"No! No, they took your father, they'll not take you too!"
Felix blanched, his own burgeoning excitement dying near instantly. Quests weren't exciting to normal people; normal people died on quests, especially quests involving a huge nest of monsters. Monsters that had just killed many of their friends and family.
The tension was palpable, roiling among Felix's already turbulent emotions. Felix fought the grimace off his face, focusing on maneuvering at speed through the crowd without hurting anyone; simultaneously, he attempted to flare his Bastion of Will. He had to do something to reduce the pressure in his chest.
Yet his emotions did not calm.
What?
Felix came to a stop three quarters of the way to the warehouse, staring into the middle distance. Humans, Hobgoblins, Orcs, the crowd noticed him for the first time, but Felix wasn't paying attention any longer. His Bastion was one of the cornerstones of his life on the Continent, an Epic ranked mental resistance Skill. It had protected him time and again from the Maw and its machinations, often proving to be the one thing between him and failure. But it was ineffectual at managing his new problem.
Because it's emotions? But those are mental, right? He was missing something obvious, he was sure. He could see the Bastion swirling with light in his core space, brighter than before, just as all his Skills had become. He was about dive into it when he felt something touch him.
Unfettered Voliti-!
Felix's fist was moving before he dropped out of his core space, the blind strike guided by his recent training. His ears, however, caught up to the motion in time to hear a single, choked off word.
"Don't!"
Felix pulled his punch, stopping only inches from a dark green skinned face. The man cowered next to him, a burly Orc with tusks bigger than Felix's pointer finger. He stepped back, fixing the Orc with eyes that he knew were glowing again. "I'm---Please don't touch me."
The Orc cracked open his eyes and nodded rapidly. An adam's apple as large as a baby's fist bobbed in his neck. "Sorry, sorry! I--We, we all just--"
"We need to know," said a woman, another Orc. She stepped from the crowd around them and gripped the still-trembling man's shoulder. "What is happening? What are you doing about this?"
Felix stared at her, unsure what to say. His Mind raced, composing then discarding a thousand phrases in seconds, all of them trite or fake. He took so long that the woman blinked and stepped back, her face guarded. She pulled her friend with her.
"I understand. We're sorry to have bothered you, Fiend," she said.
"We will win," Felix said, unwilling for her to walk away. The words came unbidden, unexamined.
The Orcs paused, glancing back at him. Felix's Perception caught dozens more around him, all craning their heads in their direction.
"I'll kill them all."
The emotions around him rumbled, swirling in fluid arpeggios. It was a hurricane and Felix the eye. With his Affinity, the sound became light became sound again, a churning of dark, soiled frustration and fear swept away by a small but powerful azure and golden light.
"I promise."
Hope is all I have. The Orcs both gave him looks of relief. The man's back straightened, as if a great burden has been shifted. A great many others around them did the same, and though it wasn't uniform or perfect, the air felt...calmer, somehow. It's all they have too.
"Thank you," she whispered, before pulling her friend back into the crowd.
They reached the warehouse along with everyone else. The interior was packed with folk, everyone from Harn to Aenea and her husband Hector. Among the crowd, Felix made eye contact with Vess shortly before catching sight of the dour Hand beside her. Darius Reed stared down his aquiline nose at Felix, his distaste only marred by his acute interest in what exactly Felix represented. Felix's Affinity could feel the man's Spirit tremble, awash in a strange melange of annoyance and curiosity. There was no fear there, unlike with many of the people outside. An Adept combatant had little to fear from Felix, especially one as reportedly capable as the Hand.
"Felix! Evie! You came back just in time," Vess smiled at the both of them as she made space. She actually shoved the Hand slightly to the side, though Felix could tell she had no real way of budging the man had he wanted to remain. Darius was even three or four inches taller than Felix, which made his glare a bit more intimidating as they sidled up. "Cal is starting."
Cal pushed her way through the crowd, carrying an armful of rolled up parchments. Maps? A couple of splintering tables had been shoved together, and Cal maneuvered to one side. "Someone clear off this damn table," she growled.
Trendle and Portia quickly scooped the remaining bowls and plates from breakfast, and Cal dumped her load of paper onto the table. With quick motions, she laid out several large maps, held down by pieces of broken masonry. Felix could see the city etched out in crude, faded lines, but it was clearly Haarwatch broken up piecemeal in each map. "You've all seen the alert. This is big. Doesn't get bigger. We got a chance to save this city, and we're gonna take it."
"Not gonna argue against ruling a Territory neither," Harn chuckled. Several others did as well, all of them former Guilders. They had a glint in their eyes, a mixture of excitement and fear.
"Neither am I," Cal agreed. "We got a shot at Territorial Authority, that means we could take control of the city in a way no one's ever done. Not here."
"But how's it work?" Bodie asked, and he wasn't the only one. Several of the others joined in a vague chorus. "We get Authority, then what? I've only heard big wigs back east have it."
"That is just it," Vess said with mounting excitement. "Most cities have Provisional Authority from the System. Not even my Father has true System Authority over his territory. With it you can do so much."
Cal pointed at Vess and looked at everyone else. "Exactly. We would gain access to any supply caches, weapons, crafting--"
"Treasure," Trendle said, his eyes glazed.
"Defenses," grunted Harn, putting an elbow into the big man's ribs. Trendle let out a small noise of surprise before pouting his mustache. "We could control the Wall. Really control it."
"How would that change things?" Reed asked, his eyes sweeping the assembled. He, aside from Zara, had the highest advancement among them. Felix had seen many of them defer to the man out of respect or maybe fear. "That just alters the hand on the wheel, is that not so?"
"Wrong," Evie said, glaring at the man. "The Guild didn't have System Authority, not full force. And now they've got none."
"Correct. The Guild only ever had Provisional Authority, granted by the Heirocrat, much as any Duke is granted. They were the rulers of this city because of the nature of the post: a wall against the monsters of the Foglands," Zara explained. "But the Guild's Charter was torn apart by the Master Inquisitor. Their Authority has been dissolved." She nodded at Aenea, who frowned in thought.
"Right, and stop interruptin' me, all of you," Cal said with a tired sigh. "The point is, we take the Authority, we take the city. Oust the Revenants, the redcloaks, by Siva's grace we could even push back those damn monster hordes at the Wall."
"Sounds...too perfect," Felix said slowly. "What's the catch?"
"The catch, boy, is that we'd have to wade through thousands of beasts to find the Nest, let alone destroy it," Reed smirked at him. "I doubt even you could manage that."
The animosity in the man's Spirit flared the moment he started talking, but Felix ignored it. He simply met the man's gaze, staring at him as the tempo of his internal rhythm started to stutter then tilt back toward caution. Felix felt the moment when the Hand remembered just who had taken a dragon out of the sky.
Darius Reed looked away first.
"Except...we all got the quest notification, yeah?" Evie asked and folks around the room nodded. "What are the chances that the Inquisition and Guilders got shafted on it?"
"Nonexistant," Zara interjected. "This was a territory wide alert. Everyone in the territory received the quest which, according to System records, means anyone in Haarwatch, these mountains, or the Foglands themselves would have been notified."
Felix immediately thought of the Archon. Is he a sentience Race, or is he a monster? Zara said monsters don't get quests. They might be fine on that front, but for how long?
"...that just means we have to stay ahead of them. System said there was a Nest, so that means a concentration of at least three thousand by Guild reckoning." Cal pointed at the center of the map, where the hill and a large, imposing tower was depicted. "City center is where we've been seeing them, so that's where we start."
"There's too many, how would we get through them all?" Bodie asked. "It'd be wading into a river of blood. We'd lose more Tin Ranks than we could train up."