Darkness and Hellfire

Chapter 62 Yellow Dress

After well over a day of rest and ‘recuperation’, the V’Nova Wexler duo found themselves in the Guild Hall verbally accepting their payment for services rendered. “We can’t pay you right away.” Edward explained. “Usually a city that dealt with this many city-ending threats would have been abandoned on the surface. The only reason the Arbencroft Duchy is propped up by the rest of the Altian Kingdom is to safeguard it from the drow empire. Because of our status as a fortress town and our negative budget, C.A.S.T. will not let me keep more than a few hundred thousand gold on hand at any given time. Apparently the risk of robbery is too high.”

“Have you ever been robbed?” Isaac wondered. He had taken so many I-owe-yous from the Guild and Duke that taking another one wouldn’t matter very much, as long as he got his money eventually that is.

“Once.” Edward conceded. “A tracker from the main branch arrived and found the thief within a day.”

“How did he do it?” Isaac asked curiously.

“Do what?” Edward questioned.

“Track down the thief.” Isaac replied.

“Listen, Isaac, I trust you.” Edward began.

“I sense a ‘but’ coming.” Isaac cut in.

“But I don’t know if I should trust that you won’t just take a payment that is due to you at your leisure if you knew no one would ever be able to prove that you did it.” Edward explained.

Isaac had to cede the point. “That is fair. A little hurtful, maybe, but fair.”

“If it makes you feel any better, the Guild still owes me money for the payouts I footed a little while ago.” Offered Edward.

“So they track down missing money in a day or so but take forever to pay their own debts.” Isaac said dryly.

“The Guild Leader is a little… odd. He’ll make sure you get your money, even if it happens post mortem.” Edward replied. “He seems to have a sort of blindness to the passage of time. The only reason he, and his minions in the capitol, are so on top of missing money is because there isn’t a guarantee that the guild will get its money at all. C.A.S.T. has never cheated anyone out of their money, even if they can be stingy when it comes to paying from time to time.”

“What am I supposed to do in the meantime though?” Isaac wondered. “Lenna’s started punching monsters to death. She needs a new sword.”

Edward raised an eyebrow. “If all you need is a sword, I might have an idea. Let me get back to you on it. For now, just sit tight and if you absolutely need money for something, come to me and I’ll figure it out.”

Isaac was genuinely surprised at the honest generosity from Edward, even if the Guild Master would eventually get his money back it was still a very personal offer. “I will. Thank you.” Isaac replied with a nod in thanks.

“Do you have anything to keep you busy until the money arrives?” Edward wondered.

“Sort of. I’ll let you know how it goes. Why? Is there something you need done?” Isaac asked.

Edward shook his head. “Nothing that I need anyone over level seven for. The sewers need fifty men for their half a decade sweep. It is usually just mutated rats and the occasional naturally reanimated animal skeleton. None of the guards will go down there unless it has started causing problems on the surface but by then it requires an extermination squad and turns into a whole small crusade.” Edward explained. “If you didn’t have anything to keep you out of trouble then you could join but, as long as I get a few weeks to catch up on paperwork and breathe before the next catastrophe happens, I will be happy.”

“As interesting as seeing the way the sewers operate would be, I’m allergic to horrid smells and fecal grime.” Isaac lightheartedly replied.

“Agreed.” Lenna added with a very serious look on her face.

Edward chuckled at the fact that even the rather serious Lenna was taking part in the joke and shook his head. “It was worth a shot. If you’ll excuse me, I have a mountain of paperwork waiting for me.” Edward sighed and left to engage in the worst part of any leadership position.

—

Klein had been walking for well over four hours but during that time the sun hadn’t moved an inch. It was still noontime and he was sweating buckets under the unforgiving tropical sun. Cicadas buzzed continuously in rhythmic patterns as they seemed to cheer him on, or maybe that was just his imagination, as he climbed what had been referred to as ‘The Ten Thousand Steps To Enlightenment’. Klein knew that it was a bunch of bull shit spouted by the monks at the bottom of Ori Jikan’s mountain. He also knew that she had sped up the passage of time inside of her domain to allow him to make the climb without the rest of the world passing him by. He also knew that she was deliberately not coming to meet him.

Klein finally came to a stop at the top of the last step and grabbed his knees while panting heavily. “There is no way that there are only ten thousand steps.” He complained through deep breaths. He shook his head and looked up to see a woman that he had always been quite fond of, though never really in the romantic sense, that he hadn’t seen for quite a while.

The woman’s long, flowing, pure black, silky hair was being combed by a woman who looked almost exactly like her, no doubt a descendant of her sister’s clan, with her eyes closed and face tilted towards the hot sun. “It is ten thousand from the last lantern.” Ori explained. Her peaceful expression was the pure definition of perfection as the warm sunlight caused her perfectly smooth skin to glow. She was a small woman and the stone that she was perched on, combined with her flowing white and red robes, made her look like a winter court fairy princess out of an old legend. Maybe she was who the legend was about in the first place since he had only heard about it four centuries ago.

“The first section is known as the Path To Peace and it is twenty three thousand, three hundred and thirty three steps.” The attendant added with a slight bow towards Klein. “This servant from house Jikan greets you, Klein Fehnok, demigod of Space.”

“Hi.” Klein said through deep breaths. “Do you have any water up here?” Klein questioned his old friend.

Ori gestured to an area a dozen feet away from him of open grass and suddenly there was a small koi pond. “Plenty.” She replied casually.

“You know what I meant.” Klein lightheartedly scolded her.

The servant girl looked like she was about to leave to fetch something from the house that Klein knew existed from his previous visits but couldn’t see. It looked as though the only things on top of Ori’s mountain were them, her rock seat, and now a koi pond. “No.” She told her servant. “He can drink out of the pond. It has been a millennium since I last saw him.”

“It’s been like two hundred years. And that is only because you haven’t come to a Council since Battle complained about your cookies. We both know that he was only trying to get under your skin so you would fight him. Blade has complained every decade that no one brings snacks anymore, it even got to the point where he said that he wouldn’t finish Battle’s new ax until he apologized to you.” Klein ranted. There was just something about being in Ori’s presence that made him feel like he was in his fifties again.

Ori finally looked down and opened her eyes so she could see him. “Is that why he came?” She asked. “I never let him in.”

“I know.” Klein replied flatly. “When was the last time you’ve even left your mountain?”

“Last month.” The servant answered for her. It seemed that she knew her mistress very well. For someone who lorded over time itself, Ori was awful at keeping track of it.

“And how long was she gone?” Klein asked.

The girl shook her head. “A minute, from my perspective.”

“So you just took a year sojourn for what, new paints?” Klein questioned.

“There was a new species of frog found in the Jilanian Jungle and I wanted to paint it.” Ori explained simply and pulled a painting, of a tree frog with pink skin and yellow eyes sitting next to a pink flower in bloom, out of the air and showed it to him. It was perfect and utterly lifelike.

Klein sighed. “It looks very nice.” He told her. “But other than miss…”

“Amaya.” The servant replied.

“Amaya, that’s a pretty name, who have you talked to within the last hundred years?” Klein pointedly questioned his oldest surviving friend.

“It could have been you if you came by more often.” Ori shot back.

“Ori, even if I did come by at regular intervals, who knows if it would have been a year or a thousand for you.” Klein argued and then took a deep breath. He let it out slowly. “I-”

Ori cut him off: “Came here for a reason other than to talk to me. I know. Why do you think I made you walk the entire way up here?”

Klein sighed again and nodded. “Can we at least sit and talk?”

Ori stared at him for a moment that could have been a second or a century and he wouldn’t have known the difference. “Fine.” She conceded and got up from her seat. No sooner had her bottom left the stone had an entire oriental building materialized behind her. The wood was painted a brilliant scarlet and the floors were sapphire crystal. Every window lacked a pane as no winds or bugs could enter the house without her permission. She walked up the three stairs to her porch and in a blink Amaya had appeared with a tea table, chairs, and a steaming tea set. A wave of dizziness assaulted Klein and he almost lost his balance. “You know better than to try and resist me on my mountain.” Ori scolded him.

“I wasn’t trying to.” Klein groaned. “If you would have given me some warning I wouldn’t have instinctually fought it.”

“Sit.” Ori ordered him and let Amaya get her chair for her. Klein soon joined her around a porcelain tea table. The tea set was entirely made of almost perfectly clear diamonds. It brought him back to their youth when the two of them, along with Gravity, figured out how to artificially create diamonds by subjecting the right material to the right forces for the right amount of time.

Amaya served them a simple black tea and suddenly it was sunset. “I, please, Ori, stop bullying me, I am sorry that I haven’t come to see you recently.” Klein told her with a seated bow.

“Fine.” Ori replied noncommittally. “Why are you here Fehnok?”

The use of his family name instead of his given name hit him like a blade in the heart. “There is a boy claiming to be a demigod.” He began. “Judgment tried to kill him but was forced to reconstitute himself. Judgment lost in an open battle in front of a thousand witnesses.”

Ori sipped from her tea. “So?” She asked. “What is another demigod? There are so many of us already. Remember when there were only ten on the planet?”

“The problem is that he is claiming to be the demigod of Darkness.” Klein replied.

Ori slowly set down her tea. “I see. You want me to check him out without scaring him into hiding. You want me to find out if we need to put down a demigod before he becomes a problem.”

“Yes.” Klein replied. “Would you come to the next Council if Battle wasn’t allowed to come?”

“You would ban a demigod from a meeting of demigods to eat my cookies?” Ori asked without a single change in her impartial facial expression.

“Yes?” Klein replied. He wasn’t sure if he had just set off a trap or not but after a moment of silence Ori didn’t react either way so he continued on with the reason he was there. “So? Will you do it?”

“Which?” Ori questioned.

“Both?” Klein offered hopefully.

Ori sighed. “Fine.” She conceded. “But Battle will be wearing a bright yellow dress for the entirety of the Council.”

Klein snorted a laugh. “Alright, I can do that.”