“Faelorn.”
“Aryon Hastor,” he greeted unceremoniously and slammed the door again.
I raised my hand to knock again. Bia practically punched it in first, the hinges screeching.
“Rough,” I said. “You could’ve been broken something.”
“Hell if I care,” she snickered and stepped aside to let me in, as if admitting me to my own execution. There was only two people in the world that could bring out this side of her.
I rolled my eyes, and turned to the Verosavens. “You two might want to stay outside. This will get awkward.”
Faelorn stood straight up, his thin face too tired to be properly angry though his goofily shaped hair helped to replace his unenthusiastic eyebrows. Not sure how that works for a tier fifty-two ex-adventurer. Kind of a scam to level that high and rewrite the internal structure of your brain, then still get tired from office work. He adjusted the cufflinks of his shirt, then gave up halfway when he decided his kids and their ragtag gang of weirdos didn’t deserve the respect.
“Alright, alright,” Bia winded in after, a bored Dan and nervous Rosa behind. “Ari here has some questions for –”
“I think I can represent myself –”
“No, you’re too nice to these two for some bloody reason yet nobody else.”
“You’re wasting time.”
“Agreed,” Faelorn said. “Get out of my office.”
“See, he’s the exact same,” Bia said. “Same lines, same fucking algorithm of assaholism and I don’t think t-fifty-twos can even get drunk.”
“You’d need t-fifty-two beers,” Lloyd said.
“That no one’s making, so my point stands.”
“Actually, high society likes to cultivate a lot of stuff like this. I hear Autumn has a lot of big vineyards –”
“My point stands regardless! Ari, let’s leave.”
“Please do,” Faelorn interjected, sitting back down and picking up his pen. He turned around and went back to filling out forms.
“You can leave if you like,” I shrugged. “I think we have an opportunity here.”
“I – ” Bia cut. “Ugh.”
She dragged a spare chair of the spindly wooden variety into the floorspace and sat down like a toddler barely calmed from their tantrum. Two violet eyes scraped at the back of Faelorn’s skull.
“Faelorn,” I stepped forward.
“Why did you come here, Ari?” he sighed, not turning his head. “I thought you were satisfied with hiding out in Javenshard.”
“I wasn’t,” Bia glowered.
“That I can believe,” he snorted.
“Faelorn,” I pressed before Bia could derail again. “I met a creature in the Javen Woods.”
“That seems like a regular occurrence. You are a monster hunter, are you not?”
“Specifically not an adventurer, ” Bia said.
“It wanted my hourglass. Do you know anything abou – ”
Faelorn whirled around, several papers flowing from his desk as his pen spun away with such force as to lodge itself into the wall, narrowly missing the glass window. His eyes flared just as red as I remember. He glanced nervously at Lloyd, but decided that if he’d gotten this far he probably knew already. Lloyd winced.
“Mail it.”
?> Item mailed from [Aryon Hastor]
Being: [Unknown] (Dysphorium (Alt. 3152))
[Obfuscated]
Entity does not have a root in Governance system
Entity shares foreign magic system equivalent of your title [Dormant]
“This is bad,” he said, eyes panning and registering the text in milliseconds. “Do you know what a dysphorium is?”
“We know it’s really powerful and can reality-bend,” Lloyd said. “It also seems to really like dish soap.”
“We hoped,” I said, attempting to get the conversation on track. “That perhaps the guild would be able to help.”
“The guild doesn’t help if you don’t pay,” Faelorn snorted.
“So we came to you. Your influence could get this issue pushed up the queue – ”
“The guild can’t help. They will not be able to fight a dysphorium.”
“Right,” my breath caught. “If Haelcrien can’t fight it, then could we perhaps reach out to the Autumn Kingdom, or the Delirians or –”
“There is no force on this planet capable of fighting a dysphorium. In fact, you yourself would have the highest chance of winning, with that hourglass of yours. I suspect that they sent a dysphorium specifically to counter you. It attempted to intimidate you at first, yes?”
“That’s right.”
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
“The hourglass is bonded to your soul; it needs your consent to be taken away and used by another. The dysphorium tried to pretend that you couldn’t possibly fight it, but your reality bending puts you on the same playing field as it, albeit missing most of your attributes.”
“Right. Then what do you propose we do?”
“You fight it and kill it.”
“Wha –”
“That’s suicide!” Bia screeched.
“If you fail, you give the hourglass to Bia. If she fails, then all hope is lost,” he sighs.
“Shouldn’t you and Duskir take a crack at it too then?” I raised an eyebrow. “You are both higher tier than us, better experienced, and capable of reality bending as well. I could just hand you the hourglass and you could probably do it far better than I.”
“Your mother would not be able to reality bend. She married in. And I have more important things to do.”
“More important than defeating the demon that, by your own fucking words, could eviscerate the planet in a weekend?!” Bia shouted. “What could you possibly have to do higher priority than keeping the planet you’re standing on?”
“Language,” Faelorn said flatly.
“My life is labelled with graphic violence and profanity asshole!”
“Oh hells, calm it Bia,” I said. “Faelorn, why can’t you help?”
“Too much to explain,” he said dryly.
“That sounds an awful lot like cowardice,” Bia narrowed her eyes. “Not that that’s anything new.”
“I think it’s time you got out of my office,” Faelorn slid back into disinterest, refocusing on his paperwork.
“Really?! You just give us a fucking doomsday proposition like an oracle and then tell us to leave? What are you, a lazy plot device?”
Faelorn levelled his eyes. “I can’t tell you anything more or you’re going to do something stupid. This is all I have for you. Get out before I get security, or, trinity forbid, do it myself. That wouldn’t be a good luck for either of us.”
“Fuck you.”
“You’re going to net me a noise complaint.”
“And that still ain’t fucking ‘nough to excuse your bitchy sins aye?!”
Lloyd leaned over. “Should I be in here? This seems like a family matter.”
“Mhmm,” I said with a wave of the hand. “It doesn’t much matter. Bia probably needs to get this out or whatever. It’s called venting, I think.”
“I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not,” said Lloyd with a face between offended and galactically confused.
“I’m not familiar with the term, sorry,” I said.
“You really have no social life.”
“Shut up,” I retorted lazily, half my attention on Lloyd and the rest on Bia screaming and Faelorn having an incredibly Dan attitude to it. Speaking of. “D’you think the Verosavs can hear all this? Rosa seems like an eavesdropping prone person and Faelorn was concerned about noise complaints.”
There was an audible scrambling and coughing from the other side of the door.
“So, why’re we still here?” Lloyd whispered.
“Bia,” I sighed, tapping her on the shoulder. “Come on, we can come back another time.” I turned on Faelorn. “You better have an answer for us by then, Father.”
Bia’s eyes never left the back of Faelorn’s head as I dragged her out by the hand. Lloyd followed close behind. I shut the door behind us – it set in unevenly. Hopefully we wouldn’t have to pay for that. In that case I’d probably just run back to Javenshard. The guild won’t bother if they have to go to a settlement without a transit system.
Rosa was waiting outside, staring into space and whistling in pure inconspicuousness. She had paid so little attention to our conversation that she entirely missed us exiting the room.
“Rosa,” Lloyd approached, and she perked up with zero faked surprise. “Where’s Dan?”
“Oh, he took a stroll somewhere. I think he left the guild campus.”
“Oh, great,” Bia said, still a little uncharacteristically pissed. “How the heck are we gonna find him?”
“He’s probably in the open markets,” Lloyd guessed. “He told me a lot about the street food here. Least imperiously bland stuff in the city, apparently.”
“He did say something like that,” Rosa pondered.
“Oh, great” Bia said, cheerier. “We should try some of that.”
“That’s a mood swing,” I snickered to Lloyd as we got moving.
“Just good to have her back to normal,” he shrugged. “Angry Bia is kinda scary.”
“Really? It’s only slightly more gremlinish than she already is.”
“I suppose I don’t spend all that much time around her,” he laughed, then his expression worried again. “What do you think of what your dad said?”
“One, don’t call him my dad,” I said. “Father or Faelorn always, or both of us will be pissed. Two, I’m not all that inclined to believe shit he says. He’s always been a little cuckoo. More subtle than Mother, but of an ultimately more serious variety, I’d think. After all, we didn’t come to him for information.”
“But if it’s true, then you have a lot more on your shoulders than we expected.”
“I guess,” I grimaced.
“It’s fine!” Bia inserted herself, slinging an arm around us both. “I once heard a man say that ya can crush a bug with a foot or a building. The ant dies a painful death either way, so who gives a shit?”
“You cope,” Rosa giggled. “You never pull quotes from someone else, you’re always improv’ing nonsensical shit.”
“Nonsensical? I think eccentric is good, though, isn’t it? It makes sense, to a certain type of person in a certain type of way. Lots of interpretations!” she grinned widely.
“Is she alright?” Lloyd whispered to me. “Sorry, it feels like I’m doing a lot of whispering behind Bia’s back today.”
“I think this is normal,” I shrugged. “I don’t pay attention to her normally.”
We passed out of the expansive guild grounds and entered back into the city streets, out of the comfortingly low guild complex and into the towering maze of the skyscrapers. At ground level, they were much more elaborate than their sleek, sharp crowns, covered in intricate sculpture and pillars.
The streets seemed akin to the width of those in smaller towns with the size of the buildings, but were plenty grand enough to host a flood of people moving through streetside market stalls.
“So, what do we do now?” Lloyd said as we slowed our pace to walk a little behind the others.
“We’ll revisit Faelorn tomorrow,” I said. “It’s been a long day.”
“I don’t think he’ll be any more inclined to listen.”
“We’ll try and give up if necessary.”
“That’s an odd way of saying it,” Lloyd giggled.
“Bia says I say most things oddly. I think I’m pretty fluent in Eoresse.”
“Fluent, but it’s like you twist it into your own weird little dialect,” he smiled. “Your prose has a lot of personality.”
“‘Course it does, I have a personality. Faelorn doesn’t have much of one, but he can predicted somewhat. I think I’ll be able to get at least a little out of him tomorrow, give him some time.”
“Right, yeah. How are we gonna deal with Grim?”
My face tightened.
“No idea. I’m not fighting that thing, and definitely not letting Bia take a crack either. Maybe if we went to the same source that Grim came from we could find a matching force…”
“Or maybe to Dawne?” Lloyd suggested. “They seem on the same playing field.”
“We don’t know that,” I sniffed. “Last I recall, Dawne is also on the planet. Though I suppose Faelorn wouldn’t know much about them seeing as nobody knows shit about them at all.”
“Yeah…”
“Oi, I see Dan!” Rosa called from up front, and the trio above started running. We followed.