bullyxtreme B5 Chapter 550: Silk Weave, pt. 1
B5 Chapter 550: Silk Weave, pt. 1
Kaius fiddled with the buttons of his ultramarine velvet doublet, feeling like a trussed up pig under the watchful gaze of Jossua, the Ruby Crown receptionist who had originally booked them in a week ago.
The man had been more than happy to help them prepare for their dinner with Lord Flowers. It was uncanny — he’d had tailored outfits for the three of them ready to go before they’d even thought to ask for his expert advice.
Even if the clothes were made to his measurements, they still didn’t feel like they fit. Too much colour. Most of his existing wardrobe was in earthtones and the odd splash of green, and contrast between his doublet and daffodil coloured shirt made him feel like a bouquet.
Jossua seemed to have singled him out as the weak link, too. He’d left Ianmus and Kenva well enough alone, and Porkchop had only had to brush his fur.
“What’s the point in going through all this effort if it won’t even satisfy Lord Flowers in the first place?” Kaius asked as the receptionist finished circling him with a self-satisfied nod. The man had made it quite clear that there were leagues of minutiae that made up ‘proper dress and decorum’.
A moment later, Kenva walked out of her room wearing a calf-length flowing maroon dress with open sleeves that left her movement unhindered.
“You look good!” she said.
Ianmus looked over from where he was picking at his cream necktie in front of a full length mirror. It looked identical to the last half-dozen times he’d adjusted it.
“Nice dress, it complements your hair nicely,” he said, drawing a smile from Kenva. A moment later, he switched his attention to Kaius. “The point is that it's a formal dinner, so we have to dress nice, but we are not members of high society.”
“You know, I have to agree with Kaius there — that sounds like meaningless drivel,” Porkchop replied.
Thank the gods someone agreed with him. If they weren’t expected to maintain etiquette, then why were there so many damn rules he had to remember? It might have been trivial with his growing stats, but he’d much rather give his attention to, say, a collection of a thousand recipes of gruel rather than bloody etiquette training.
Jossua gave him a smile. “Perhaps I can explain. As Silvers of exceptional capability and talent, you have status due to your strength and deeds. That means there is a level of expectation that you will treat a formal occasion as formal, and do your best to be polite. If you didn’t dress up at least this much, or bother to learn the basics, it would rightfully be taken as an intentional disrespect. That said, true etiquette takes years to learn, and as the good mage said, you are not members of high society. You’d look like an idiot if you tried to do everything. More importantly, you’d look like you were trying to ingratiate yourself, which would be placing yourself beneath your host.”
Kaius groaned — did everything have to be a power play?
“Still sounds ridiculous to me,” Porkchop said, echoing his sentiment.
Kenva and Ianmus, on the other hand, seemed to be handling it just fine. He supposed they would. Kenva was a clan scion who would have been expected to brush shoulders with all sorts of people if she ever joined her family’s caravans, and Ianmus would have had to have gotten good at handling nobles to survive Mystral.
“Anything else nonsensical and obscure I should know?” Kaius asked.
“Chew with your mouth closed,” Kenva chimed in with a sunny smile
The receptionist gave a half smile at her joke. “There will be a lot of cutlery. Start at the outer edge, and work your way in with each course.”
That was just the start of it. Jossua seemed to have dozens of different little niceties he wanted Kaius to remember. How was this not proper etiquette?
….
Kaius stared at his steak, with its perfect crosshatch char and a topping of bright red moss. The moss writhed like living flames, curling and lapping at the air.
Both glowed potently to his mana sight.
The table he sat at was immaculate, covered by a white cloth with a solid gold candelabra dominating its centre. He sat in the middle. Porkchop was on his right, sitting on an immense ruby cushion that had been thoughtfully provided, while Kenva and Ianmus were at his left.
The lords sat across from him. Lord Julian Flowers mirrored his position, with Lord Kel Frostbloom at his right, and the rest of their team members to their left. Each wore a perfected mask of polite disinterest as the servers filed silently out of the dining room.
It was their fourth course. Each and every preceding one had been just as mana rich and strange. The cost must have been exorbitant — but Kaius supposed the man’s father did lead a significant chunk of the Dukedoms.
Kaius reached for his next set of cutlery that sat in a neat line above his plate. Eight sets remained.
The steak was a flawless medium and so tender he was sure it could have been cut with a spoon. That explained the knife looking better suited for butter than meat. Juice exploded through his mouth as a mellow heat rose from the moss. Mana followed, a rich scent of kindled embers and running free through the forest. Somehow, the alien sensation melded perfectly with the hearty bite of the meat.
Kaius suppressed a satisfied sigh, once again pondering an entire complexity to cooking he’d never considered before. Magical synesthesia was by no means ubiquitous, and his own olfactory sensations were by no means the only form it took. Wrangling bloody mana into the dish’s flavour profile must have been a nightmare.
Savouring his bite, he evaluated the silent table. Their first course had been for introductions, and they’d finally gotten the names of Lord Flowers' final two team members. The thin, blonde-haired man immediately on Flowers' left was one Lord Adrian Steelroot, the heir to a marquessdom that controlled a major city within Baanswell’s sphere of influence.
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To Steelroot’s left was the final member of the lord’s party, a broad-shouldered man with black hair and a constant watchful look that kept Kaius on edge. Baron Edmund Rosenhall. His status alone made Kaius weary. He might have been the only head of a house at the table, but a Baron was the lowest rank of true nobility. That meant the man would almost certainly have the weakest legacy of the lot. To still be present, he would have had to have stacked his skill list with rare and powerful abilities. Ambitious and talented was always a dangerous combination.
Still, it had been two courses since they’d first spoken, and they’d been almost totally silent. He knew it was expected — something about proper conversation waiting for a quelled appetite — but it still felt manufactured and forced.
“This is doing my head in,” Kaius said silently .
“Not much for it, I’m afraid,” Ianmus replied. “Besides, you’ll have your hands full in a few minutes. It’s nearly the fifth course.”
Right — because as the leader of their party, he was the one expected to speak for them. Not the lords though. That would be on Flowers’ second — one Kel Frostbloom. Flowers himself wouldn’t deign to speak to them until at least the seventh. Fucking nobles.
“At least the food is interesting. I didn’t expect them to serve crickets,” Porkchop chimed in.
That had surprised Kaius too. They weren’t too bad — similar to some of the river prawns he’d eaten once or twice. Very crunchy, but the butter that had tasted of napping in a field of daffodils had been good.
Enjoying the rest of his steak, Kaius mournfully left a fifth behind a minute or so after Lord Flowers had placed his knife and fork politely to the side. It felt rude to waste such a masterfully cooked meal, but both Jossua and Ianmus had been very clear that finishing his plate was a sign of rude impatience. Apparently it was far more complex than that, with exacting ratios and positioning of remnant food indicating a whole host of things — thank the bloody gods that they weren’t expected to do that.
Before long, servers in emerald petticoats flowed into the room like silent wraiths and whisked away their plates. It took seconds for them to be replaced — some sort of scorched fish, drizzled with an iridescent green sauce.
The lords attacked in moments, he barely had time to pick up his next set of cutlery.
Frostbloom took a slow sip of his red wine and gave them a polite half-smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
“It is a pleasure to dine with fellow people of talent. Even the driven rarely reach Silver by forty.”
Kaius knew the man had underestimated their age, but he wasn’t going to correct him.
“Still, with your sudden arrival in the city, we’ve been most curious about where your travels have taken you. Considering the…distinctive nature of your party, it's rather difficult not to connect you to some of the more colourful rumours that have come out of the Frontier in recent weeks.”
“They’re fishing for information on the Tyrant,” Ianmus warned silently.
That much was obvious to Kaius — and not unexpected. At the end of their discussion yesterday, Olmos had told them it would be likely, and said it was a good enough way to extend the duke an olive branch and offer some forewarning of the droplets. The Guild was still actively in the process of sharing that with the powers of the world, but it was a delicate matter — and this was a golden opportunity to perhaps loosen up some of the restrictions the guild was facing.
“I assume you mean the siege of Deadacre? We were there — helped to put the creature down in the end.”
The team of lords across from him didn’t so much as twitch at his words, they were far too skilled for that. Still, Kaius could practically feel the claws of their attention settling on his neck.
Frostbloom raised his glass in a slight toast. “To think we would have the honour of hosting the Heroes of Deadacre. Bravo, truely, it sounds like the battle was a close thing.”
Pausing for a moment, Frostbloom took a small bite of his fish. The rest of the team of Lords let the silence lie.
“After word of a full blown invasion, every duke has been on the lookout for such creatures, but we have yet to find one. There's been talk of funding suitable expeditions into the old high mana zones of the province to seek them out and nip the problem firmly in the bud, but it's been hard to get traction. Information on their capabilities has been hard to come by, and with the Wardog abdicating so soon after the fight, it has been hard to find the political will. Far too many think we should shore up our defences and wait.” Lord Frostbloom mused, looking at him with a pointed invitation.
The man had still said nothing about their run in with his retainers. Kaius didn’t expect him to. Nor had he directed any questions at Kaius’s friends.
“We’d be happy to share — the creatures are far too great a threat to do otherwise,” Kaius replied, before taking a sip of his drink so that he could gather his thoughts. “First, let me say that the Guild fully intends to share the full details of what it has learned about Tyrants with the sitting powers of Vaastivar. The delays have merely been due to the sensitivity of the matter, especially after the excitement of the sharing of Skills.”
Lord Frostbloom and his companions paused for a moment, before the man gave him an evaluating look. “And yet you seem to be fully willing to share, despite that abundance of caution?”
Kaius nodded. “We’ve been given the go-ahead by a Grandmaster — a show of good faith.”
“Oh? Then tell us more — I’m most curious why four mid Silvers were picked to fight alongside high and peak Gold, and why it was a Gold that suffered a debilitating injury. Rumours say it challenged a team of six, lest the city be swarmed, but that does little to explain why you were picked when at least one more Gold was in the city.”
“The creature was strong. It possessed a might far beyond simple levels, which were no greater than mine are now,” Kaius started to explain. “It requested it fight the four of us directly, for the very same reason we were in the best position to fight it.”
“Your Aspects,” Lord Flowers interjected, drawing glances from his team as he broke polite decorum — though Kaius thought it was his right to do so as the host and most senior present.
“Our Aspects,” Kaius confirmed.
“All of you have reinforced all three? Is it something to do with the Essence we have sensed since reaching Silver?” Lord Flowers pressed.
Again, Kaius nodded. “It’s impossible to know how far it has reached, but it was beyond Refinement, that much was clear. It could use Essence. Weaponise it. Even its Authority was crushing — we could barely stand it. Without Aspects, you’d need a Platinum team to be sure of safely wiping the creature out — the rebirth you experience when rising through the tiers seems to confer at least some resistance, as does general strength. Arc’theros was at the very peak of Gold and he was still staggered for some time.”
Lord Flowers openly scowled, though the rest of his team only showed their displeasure in the faintest of frowns. “That’s damn near impossible. Too few see the need without requisite gain. They’d rather wait and see if one turned up on their doorstep before they act, and it’ll take at least a year before true assets can be developed that have fully reinforced their Aspects — unless you can share more about the process?”
There it was. The entire damned point of this dinner. Lord Flowers might have had a perfectly even expression, but Kaius could practically smell his hunger. The man was clearly driven and powerful, and they had something he wanted. That gave Kaius some leverage — he could only hope it would be enough to get some insight into the situation with Kanmost.