Chương 37: [Vows and Bloodlines]

Mike glanced over at the boys.

"Lads, if you can." Luka and Phil reached into inventory. Wooden panels appeared in their hands and were passed across before the village side had fully registered what was happening. Leo and Parmo worked the sections into a flat square on the ground. Sam set the table on top of it without it shifting. Chairs followed one by one, passed along and placed, a bench amongst them that went down near the head of the table.

The elders would have space closest to it, the rest of the seating fanning back, everyone still within the wooden square the boys had laid. Merin watched a chair appear from nothing and find its spot on the wooden surface. He looked at Koss. She raised her eyebrows slightly and looked back at the table. Rika leaned over to Shai.

"Look at that. They have a bigger one for Torren." Torren looked at Leo with a smile.

"Thank you for the thought my friend." Leo shrugged.

"No problem mate. Seemed like the right thing to do." Yara sat without comment, though her eyes moved across the boys once before settling forward. The others followed. Kai took his position behind the elders without being asked. Ronan drifted to the edge of the group, angled toward the treeline, and stayed there. Once everyone had settled Yara spoke before anyone else could.

"Before we begin I want to raise something." She looked across the table, unhurried.

"The empire doesn't know you're here. That's the best thing you have going for you right now, and I'd like us to agree to keep it that way. Nothing about this town, your people, your knowledge or this agreement leaves this group. No traders, no travellers, nobody outside of Stonehall. Not because I don't trust what I've seen today, but because the longer you stay unknown the safer everyone in your town and our village is." John leaned forward slightly.

"When you say safer, what are we actually dealing with?" Yara considered where to start.

"The empire controls most of this continent," she said.

"Has done for generations. At the top sits Emperor Malakor who keeps the noble houses in line, not because they respect him particularly, but because they've seen what happens to the ones who push too far. Below him the houses do what noble houses do. Fight each other, grab for land and resources, play politics. It's been that way long enough that most of them have forgotten there was ever anything different." Merin continued where Yara had stopped.

"The system is built to keep power exactly where it is. Magic runs through bloodlines. Knowledge sits behind closed doors. At ten years old every child in the empire is tested. The gifted ones, usually those who receive combat magic, get taken for training. Their families are told it's an honour, are uplifted slightly, socially." He paused.

"It keeps the talented away from anyone who might use them against the houses." Mike said nothing. Across the table Frank's jaw had tightened slightly. Koss spoke next.

"For people like us the empire is a different kind of problem. Beast-kin, orcs and half-orcs, anyone outside their definition of acceptable, in the core you have no protection under the law. Nobles take who they want. Most of us with any sense moved to the border a long time ago. Out here we're tolerated, on the border we have a use. They'd rather us protect their border than having to pay for people to do the same thing. In there..." she didn't finish the sentence. A few of the council had gone quiet.

Mags was looking at her hands. Merin continued.

"The empire won't come north with soldiers looking for you. What will happen is a trader passes through, hears something unusual, mentions it somewhere it shouldn't be mentioned. Word travels. Greed does the rest. We've had a taste of that closer to home. Border villages don't forget." Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. A moment passed after Merin finished.

"They take children," Diane said. Not a question.

"The gifted ones," Merin said.

"Yes." Diane's face paled.

"And beast-kin," Gary said.

"They can just, what, take whoever they want off the street?"

"If a noble wants them," Koss said.

"Yes." Gary's jaw tightened. He looked at the table, then back up.

"That's..." He stopped himself.

"We read about systems like this," Mike said.

"Centuries back. Feudal lords, serfdom, slavery. In our world it's something we have moved past. Our country and a lot of others have basic human rights. This sort of thing..." He looked across at Koss.

"I'm sorry. That we're sat here and that's still what people are living with." Mags had her hands flat on the table.

"How do people just accept it."

"They're born into it," Koss said simply.

"Most never see anything different." Parmo was very still. Leo hadn't looked up from the table. Across from them Shai, Rika and Torren said nothing. Koss watched the town side. Merin caught her eye. Yara had already seen it. Something passed between the three of them, brief, almost imperceptible, before they looked away. Frank let it sit another moment then brought it back to ground.

"Nearest imperial presence. How far?"

"Four days," Yara said.

"There's a city, Valdris, closest city of any size to the border. Not the core but connected to it. That's where word ends up if a trader carries it. The man in charge of that place is... not pleasant." Frank nodded once.

"Right." Mike looked at Frank. Frank gave a single nod.

"You have our word," Mike said.

"Nothing leaves this group." Merin looked at Yara. She gave a small nod in return.

"Then we can begin," Merin said. Mike straightened slightly.

"Right. I'll start with what we need because I think that's more honest than starting with what we're offering." He looked across the table.

"Food is the immediate problem. We have stores but they won't last indefinitely and we're not producing anything yet. We need to know what's safe out there, what we can grow, where we can do it without putting people at risk. After that it's protection and knowledge of the land. The UI changed everyone in town physically. We have people who can be trained to fight, more than you might expect.

Everyone in town can learn magic as far as we can tell but so far it's only really the five lads here and a few others who have got it to work. We don't know enough about what's around us, what comes out of those trees or how to deal with it when it does."

"What we can offer in return is everything we know. Agriculture, medicine, engineering, construction. I know the boys told you about our world's weapons. We have the knowledge to make them but we don't have the infrastructure and guns are a road we'd need to think carefully about before going down. They change everything. Yes they make it so everyone can defend themselves but they also make the potential for destruction on a whole new level very real. Guns would change this world forever."

"Our world solved problems without magic that this world may not have looked at yet." He glanced at Diane.

"And there's the UI. I'll be honest with you, we don't fully understand it ourselves."

"From the moment we arrived it showed us a timer," Mike continued.

"It ran for a week. When it reached the end everyone in town blacked out at the same time. We woke up changed. Some fitter, others with injuries they had carried for years just gone overnight. Our oldest got twenty, thirty years back in one go, keeping pace with people half their age. The condition of everyone, even those older, is peak for their age. The UI shows everyone their physical condition and the spells they've learned.

It also gives everyone a place to store whatever they want and we aren't sure of a limit for it either. It translates language, that's how we're talking right now." He paused.

"It also does things we didn't ask for. A message appeared early on, when people were struggling with not knowing what happened to those left behind. Nobody requested it. It just arrived." He glanced at the boys.

"One of the lads was thinking about something aloud and it acted on it. The change it made affected everyone's UI, like it had realised his idea was better than what was there currently and made the change on the spot." He left that sitting for a moment.

"We don't know where it came from. We don't know who built it or why. What we do know is it doesn't seem random. There's a pattern to when things happen with it, we just haven't figured out what that pattern is yet." He looked across at Merin.

"We're offering full cooperation on understanding it. Anything it does, anything we learn about it, you'll know when we do." Merin listened. When Mike finished he was quiet for a moment.

"That is," he said carefully, "a remarkable thing to not fully understand. If you can learn to use it fully it's going to be your best asset." He looked across at his fellow elders briefly then back to Mike.

"I think we have a great deal to discuss."