• Solo • The Chancellor, Part 3

[Doran]

Part 1
Part 2

Ymiden 22, Arc 720

On the 20th of Ymiden, the son of Ziell had had the first dream. He had attended a lecture that had been held by a new colleague, Orik Qy’Azour, a man of mixed biqaj and human descent, that trial before he had taught a class. At night, those events had mixed with past experiences and future plans and ambitions in order to create an unusually realistic scenario, a scenario that might have become reality if things had happened only slightly differently.

In his first dream, Orik had burst into the classroom while he had been teaching in order to inform him that something had happened to the Chancellor of the Academy of Viden, Sheud Fahe, an elderly Eidsi. He had lost consciousness during a meeting and fallen from his chair. Orik had been asked to take him to the Infirmary where the Chancellor was being treated.

His medical expertise was necessary, he had said.

At first, Doran had assumed that the Chancellor had simply suffered a stroke, but some of the symptoms hadn’t made sense. That first dream had ended just as he had been about to use one of the abilities that his divine blood afforded him in the hope that it would help him make sense of things and find a way to heal the Chancellor who was currently in a coma (he had been able to stabilize him for the time being, but he hadn’t been able to do more than that).

He could read people’s memories.

The second dream the following night continued almost exactly where the first dream had stopped. He had seen a woman in the Chancellor’s memories, a woman that he had thought he would never see again, Smoke, an Yludih alchemist and poisoner. In Zi’da, countless people had ended up in the Infirmary due to her concoctions, some of them close to death.

He had been directly responsible for her arrest.

In the Chancellor’s memory, she had been wearing the form that she had worn when she had been arrested, her preferred form, that of a curvy, red-haired human woman. She had been dressed in an elegant gown and drunk wine as she had chatted with several members of Viden’s high society which he had found strange to say the least, considering her background and her crimes.

He had not been sure if Smoke had been responsible for the Chancellor’s condition or if her presence had been coincidence, but he had decided to investigate regardless. Even if she was not responsible for what had happened to the Chancellor, she was likely responsible for something.

He had decided to change his appearance so that he would not be recognized – he had become something of a public figure in Viden since he had moved there approximately two arcs prior. That was where the dream ended, quite abruptly – only to continue the following night.

[Doran]

The man that slipped out of the Obsidian Prism looked different from the man that had entered approximately a break earlier. He was a young man, in his early twenties maybe, pale, with coal-black hair and blue eyes, slender and clean-shaven, a university student, maybe, and he wore plain, dark clothes and a hooded cloak. His hands were encased in soft gloves in order to hide the markings on his hands, his mutations that were the same no matter which form he took, unless he decided to suppress his spark with a Ring of Paradigm.

Doran had decided to visit some of the places that Smoke had previously been active in and look for some of her previous customers. Smoke was an arrogant woman and seemed like someone that would revisit some of the places where she had conducted her previous crimes, unless her stay in prison – she had surely ended up in prison after she had been convicted for several cases of attempted murder – had altered her personality drastically.

In the waking world, Viden was troubled by an unusual heatwave and the streets were covered with an unpleasant mixture of mud and slush. In this dream, the city was covered with a shimmering white blanket though, and as beautiful as ever, and it was snowing lightly. Some time had passed since the streets had last been cleared, and Doran’s feet left imprints in the snow.

He walked at a brisk pace, but he did pay some attention to his surroundings, even before he arrived at his destination. In the breaks since the Chancellor had fallen ill, the city had become a different one. Since the news had spread, the atmosphere was subdued, and the tension was almost tangible. It was as if all of Viden were holding its breath.

The apothecary behind which Smoke had conducted her shady business before her arrest was still open. He could see light in the windows, and he could make out a couple of figures, customers and employees of the apothecary, most likely. He did not walk inside though. Instead, he took a quick look around in order to make sure that nobody would be watching him before he disappeared into the alley that was behind the building.

Fortunately, there was nobody there. There were only a few barrels and some trash that somebody had discarded there, and an orange cat, a thin little thing that was sitting on a crate, watched him from out of yellow eyes. He met the animal’s gaze for a moment before he turned away – and focused.

He had recently acquired an artifact that worked similarly to Attunement. When he activated it, he could get vague impressions, murder, betrayal, deception, although he couldn’t figure out the source. None of the Notes that he had expected to find were here now though. Smoke was a liar, she was treacherous, and she had without a doubt already committed murder, and most of her customers – at one point she seemed to have supplied half of the drug addicts in Viden with her creations – were probably not much better.

What he could sense now though was …

… despair.

[Doran]

He furrowed his brow for a moment as that was unexpected. Before he could think about what that meant in more detail, he could hear the sound of footsteps though, coming closer and closer. A man entered the alley, a sickly looking human male in his late twenties that was trembling despite the fact that he was wearing multiple layers of clothing as well as a thick woolen scarf and a hat. The orange cat that had been watching him so far, abruptly jumped off the crate where she had taken up residence, let out an irritated meow and quickly disappeared.

“Are you looking for Smoke?” the man asked, slurring his words slightly. “She isn’t here, man. She said that she would continue her business, but then she suddenly disappeared again. Wait!” he continued and narrowed his eyes. They were bloodshot, the Mortalborn noticed, and what more, his teeth were crooked and yellow. “Do you have anything to do with her disappearance? Do you work for the guards?”

The Mortalborn made a face as the situation reminded him of a similarly irritating occurrence that had involved a similarly paranoid and illogical mortal a couple of seasons earlier. He was about to leave the alley again as there was nothing more to be gained in his opinion now that he had been interrupted, when the mortal abruptly advanced, clenching his fists as he did so, in what he likely thought was a menacing way. His attack was uncoordinated and laughably weak though – whatever drug he was on, probably didn’t help either.

Doran simply stood there and waited until the man had reached him, tapping his foot slightly impatiently. A moment later, his hand shot forward, and he dug his fingers into the mortal’s forearm with all of his strength. The man cried out in pain before he exclaimed, his eyes that were filled with fury now filled with fear, “I’m sorry, man! Let go of me! I wasn’t really trying to hurt you. I won’t tell anyone that you were here either, I promise!”

The Mortalborn simply pushed him away, a look of vague disgust on his face, and the addict ran, as fast his feet could carry him, stumbling slightly as he did so due to his panic.

Doran watched him for a few moments before he disappeared as well, in the opposite direction in order to continue his search, but to no avail. There was no trace of Smoke. There was only that strange Note again, somewhere near the Infirmary, despair, mixed with a hint of deception this time. Did it really belong to her though, or to somebody else? Maybe he should have tried to read the addict’s memories, he thought with a hint of regret and let out a sigh, but the man had been so irritating that he had not thought of it. No matter, he would find out what was going on before long.

He always did.

With that thought in mind, he returned to the Obsidian Prism in order to change back into his usual form – and eventually go to bed as it had gotten rather late. He would continue his investigation the following trial. Under normal circumstances, he would likely have left said investigation to Viden’s law enforcement, but there was something about this case that was strange and worrying. For a moment, as he lay there, unable to immediately fall asleep, he wished that Balthazar Black were there. A private investigator, especially one that was as trustworthy as his acquaintance, someone that he could discuss the case with, would have been useful. Maybe he would contact him, but then again, somebody might intercept his letter.

~~~

It was probably close to midnight when he woke up again quite abruptly. Something had triggered the wards that he had outfitted his apartment with. Someone was there, in his home. His heart began to beat a hint faster as he reached for the knife that was lying on the nightstand next to his bed and hid it under his blanket, and then he waited. A few moments later, he could hear footsteps, quiet, but not quiet enough for him to not notice them, and then the door to his bedroom was carefully being pushed open, and someone snuck inside. He had expected the intruder to try and attack him, but to his surprise, he heard a most familiar voice instead.

“We need to talk.”

It was just as he heard those words that he woke up again, for real this time.

For a while, after he had woken up, he continued to lie there, in his bed, wondering about the strange dream that he had had and the people that had been in it, but his memories of it faded quickly, as was often the case with dreams. By the time that he went into the kitchen to eat the breakfast that his mortal cook, Elias, had prepared for him, he could barely recall the details, and when he went to the Academy, he had already forgotten all about it - only to end up back there again the folllowing night.

To be continued.

[Pig Boy]

Doran

Experience: 10 no magic xp

Knowledge: none

Renown: none

Skill Usage: none used.

Loot/Losses: none

Injuries/Conditions: none

Consequences: none

Comments: WIthout knowing much about the other entries to this series, I found the opening crawl to be a useful way to catch up. I like Doran as a private investigator, he seems very well suited to the role of solving mysteries with his logical mind.

There were parts where acknowledgements of the waking world were made, which made me wonder how non-lucid Doran really was, but they didn't detract from the story. My main complaint is that the actual narrative without the opening summary was a bit on the short side. It's not a big deal if you take all the threads together from beginning to end, but the opening summary did take a big chunk out of the word count, it seems. Again, I'm not saying the opening summary is a bad thing, though, I enjoyed it and will probably employ a similar thing to some of my series perhaps!

That said, the writing in the actual narrative of the story was clean and interesting as always. Doran had some interesting trinkets and powers that he put on full display in this dream. I'm a little curious how the attunement artifact works, if he can only detect a certain family of notes or if it gives him full attunement. I almost think that (full replacement for attunement) would be too powerful even for a grandmaster alchemist to make with blood magic, as the effects tend to be more narrow in that science.

Great writing and enjoy the rewards.

If you have any concerns about this review, please PM me about them.