[Dusk Tower] Stockpiling Day (Solo)

[Alses]

Timestamp: 91st Day of Summer, 512 A.V. The Dusk Tower was outwardly peaceful when, early one morning in the late summer, Alses reported for duty as usual. She was hoping for a relatively light workload today, which would give her time to purchase some more blank paper and books from the Azure and leave enough daylight for her to have another conversation with Martin. Hopefully this time she'd be able to ask him what all the tools were, and how to use them properly. The half-moon cutter was really getting quite blunt already, which meant that chopping through recalcitrant tree roots was probably not its intended function. 'No boxes, please no boxes,' was her light, flippant prayer as she wandered through the – always open – gates, giving a polite half-bow to the guards on duty. It was always a good idea to be polite to people with long, pointy spears and sharp swords. Such was not to be, however. Indeed, the grand atrium of the Dusk Tower was a veritable hive of activity, the normally-unobtrusive servants rushing around with rather substantial loads on their backs – boxes marked with exotic merchants' stamps, tightly-sealed bags, cones of sugar carefully wrapped in brown paper, chests wrapped with warding glyphs and padlocks and all manner of other unusual and exotic burdens. The air was a cat's-cradle of order and counterorder as clerks bustled to and fro with reams of paper, mounds of scrolls and sheaves of important, official-looking documents, dodging around boxes and crates and the harried House Guard trying to keep order as best they could. In the face of such bustling, industrious busyness, Alses felt rather at a loss, weaving her way through the obstacle course that the normally serene atrium had become (whacking her arm on a protruding crate in the process) and making for the secretary's desk, a safe and organized port in the storm which seemed to have engulfed the Tower. She winced. 'Storm. Unfortunate word choice there.' A shiver prickled up the back of her spine as she turned the final spiral and was confronted by the main office looking as disorganized as she'd ever seen it. Tottering piles of paper soared up towards the ceiling, precarious and barely held down by a motley collection of items, from the more usual paperweights to a skyglass statuette of Zintila to a heavy inkwell; anything that was sufficiently heavy. Even the normally-impeccable secretary was looking mildly rumpled, faint frown lines crumpling his pale forehead as he squinted through his monocle at the papers flying under ink-stained fingers, quill flashing and skating over the reams of parchment. He looked up, weariness in every facet of his eyes, obviously expecting yet more paperwork; he brightened at the sight of Alses, instead. “Ah, Alses!” He'd learned her name by now, which was rather absurdly nice, especially since she still didn't know his. “Praise Zintila! I thought you were coming in with yet another load of requisition slips. It's a madhouse today!” Alses raised an eyebrow. “I did notice that,” she remarked, dryly. “What's happening? Has someone checked the storerooms and found them completely empty, or something?” The secretary shuddered. “Stockpiling,” he pronounced in a faintly martyred tone. “So you were close enough. The bane of every season for us retainers of the family. Some things are only available during Summer, for example, and the Dusks in their wisdom have found it congenial to buy them cheaply towards the end of the season, when the merchants are trying to clear their shelves for the Autumn caravan shipments from across all of Mizahar. It's a madcap dash-around for us, but it does make the budgets glow.” He rattled the explanation off in double-quick time, before waving one beringed hand at a stack of heavy cherrywood boxes. “Those all need to go to the other Towers. Settlement of accounts, mostly, but you're to inform the Dawn Tower that if they need anything extra to what his excellency the Patriarch has provided, they've only to ask. If you could have those done by lunch, I'll have another batch ready for you at the least. Long day today, courier – you'll earn your keep and then some!” He kept sneaking anxious glances at her as she slid box after box into her backpack; it really was the only way to carry large loads around the city. Did they expect her to totter about blindly with them piled high in her arms? Or maybe they thought she'd hire a wheelbarrow and cart them through the streets like that. “Be careful,” he twittered, at the dull clack of cherrywood on cherrywood. “Those are Family missives!” Alses counted to ten, hands working slowly and methodically to load the remainder. She entertained a brief fantasy of scrawling prank glyphs all over the oh-so-important boxes, and then regretfully discarded it. A wizard's glyphs were unique, a signature that could all too easily be traced back to her. The linen straps of her backpack cut painfully into her shoulders as she hefted the load – and that was the other reason, quite apart from their sheer bulk, that Alses hated box duty; the weight. Most of the important messages in Lhavit generally contained some form of small gift or other consideration packed in with them, which individually didn't weigh very much (usually), but when piled together in a backpack...each evening after a heavy box day, Alses blessed the toughened skin and physical perfection of her celestial form; she'd be a mass of bloody bruises otherwise, from the cutting straps and sharp corners of the boxes. Papercuts, too, on her fingers, were an ever-present annoyance, although a quick touch of accelerated subjective time always saw them healed without trace. Alses enjoyed her resentful internal grumbling for a bit as she staggered her way through the atrium. A really good internal grumble quite set her up for being polished and urbane the rest of the day. It was better, of course, if she could physically let rip – she'd heard somewhere once that talking to plants was good for them, but what Alses did would be more appropriately called 'ranting'. Regardless, the roses were coming up splendidly under her new ministrations, and the Respite was smelling a good deal sweeter, too, given Alses' penchant for the flowers in all their forms. Attar of roses was fast becoming the main offering in the Respite baths, and most days Alses now walked around in a gentle cloud of fragrance – which did wonders in combating the smell of musty books in the Dusk Tower library.

[Alses]

Safely out of sight of the Dusk Tower, Alses stopped for a moment, partially to organize how she was going to live up to Mr. Secretary's exacting standards (skiving off hadn't occurred to her), but mostly to give her burning shoulders a rest for a bit, supporting the dead weight of her canvas backpack and the lumps of wood inside on the unyielding skyglass of the bridge. 'Let me see,' she thought, pensive, gazing all unseeing out over the city. Ever since the djed storm, she'd been finding it more and more difficult to focus on the present. 'Dawn Tower, Twilight Tower, Tain's Studio, Touch of Fire – and a whole array of boxes to go to the Azure as well. Joy unbounded. Organize, Alse, it's what you're good at...let me think...Dawn Tower is the furthest away, on Tenten Peak, followed by the Twilight Tower. From there I've got an easy walk down to Touch of Fire – always provided I don't skid on the skyglass and go shooting off too far down the bridge, and then I can duck and weave in and out of the Azure's shops. If I'm lucky I might have enough time to stop in at Mhakula's.' It was the one indulgence, in these straitened times, that she permitted herself. The place was beautiful, peaceful, serene in a way that few mortal places were, and everyone there was a devoted tea addict who would happily pass the time of day talking about first flush and second flush, tips versus full leaves, brewing technique, the thorny issue of milk, lemon or nothing at all, whether sugar was ever acceptable...it was a whole new world, and one taken deathly seriously by its devotees. Alses approached the Dawn Tower with some degree of trepidation. She'd heard – after recovery from her own experiences of the djed storm – all about the carnage the out-of-control reimancers had caused, and of the subsequent massacre when the Shinya had to defend the city against them. The main Tower might have been repaired, thanks to the tireless work of Zintila's legion of Seiza priests and priestesses, but the grounds were still a wreck – no-one had found the time to properly clear them up yet, focused on the terrible ruin that the Tower had become. The workforce of the Dawn Tower had been decimated, either through magical haemorrhage or the swords of the Shinya, and the remnants were focusing their efforts on more important matters. Her skin crawled as she drew level with the gates – the aura of the ground beneath her feet was stained and vicious, poisoned with blood and fire. The phantom touch of sticky fluids ghosted up and down her arms – she shook her head and scattered her thoughts, disrupting the heightened concentration that was becoming more and more of an unthinking reflex these days. She had no desire to represent the Dusk Tower as a waif, shaking and shivering at past events still seared – in some cases, literally – into the auras of the area. Squaring her shoulders and with the heavy boxes leaden weights in her backpack, she walked between the alert Shinya guards stationed at the gates, flashing the Dusk Tower crest at their enquiring looks. Inside the Tower, things were even worse – Alses swallowed convulsively, fighting down a wave of bile that threatened to turn into full-on vomiting, despite her stomach being completely empty. Oh, the superstructure had all been repaired as a matter of priority, but that couldn't disguise the sheer cavernous emptiness of the place, all-but denuded of its furnishings after the reimancers' rampage. They'd washed the blood from the walls and floor and ceiling, true, they'd taken the bodies away to be decently buried, cleared up the weapons and thrown all the ruined things away, but that had left a shell of a building, and a shell that was only slowly being redecorated and repopulated at that. The messy, undirected fury and subsequent massacre that the storm had brought had been a sobering education on the disadvantages of reimancy, usually the most popular of the disciplines of magic, and a reminder to all that, yes, magic was a dangerous thing, just a little bit alive and just a little bit malevolent. The secretary's desk wasn't a hard thing to find, thankfully, an oasis of noise amid the crashing silence of the rest of the Tower – an argument about furniture consignments, apparently, and how the Matriarch, Sousa Dawn, was getting very tired of eating off planks. Alses blinked: was there not a stick of furniture left in the Tower, even after all this time? Or perhaps it was an exaggeration to get the deliveryman to move faster – that sounded more probable, to be quite honest. Still, whatever worked. “Excuse me?” she ventured, after some time, when the argument began to get cyclical. “Oh, thank Syna for interruptions!” came the explosive reply, a whirlwind of energy in human form turning to face the door and all-but bounding over to her. She had a confused impression of a thatch of thick blonde hair and warm sloe-brown eyes before the figure bent into a deep, deep bow before her. “Falan, at your service, within reason. Are you here to enroll with the Dawn Tower, help with the cleanup of the grounds, or do you come bearing gifts?” Alses blinked, owlishly. “Uh...I've got boxes from the Dusk Tower that have gifts in them, if that's any help?” Human expressions still caused her problems. “Oh, splendid, simply splendid! It'll give me something to do, really.” A black shadow passed over his face, then came back and camped there. “What with the events of Spring, we've got lots of unused stores left over. I must say, it's good of you to come delivering messages – what did the Dusk Tower offer you, a bonus for hazardous work?” Alses blinked. In a moment, Falan had gone from effervescent goodwill to razor sardonic, a mirthless half-smile tugging at his lips. “Should we have asked for one?” “Most people would've.” It wasn't quite a snarl, but it was close. “We blew ourselves up – and quite a lot of other people, too – in the djed storm in Spring – or weren't you here for that?” Alses scowled - or as close as an Ethaefal could get. “I was here,” she replied shortly. “We all have our scars, one way or another. While we are not thrilled about being in here, with all the auras stained with fire and blood and screams-” Alses shuddered; a razor-like example had cut through her moments after she'd crossed the threshold. “-I don't believe I'm in any danger right now.” She returned his lopsided grimace with a gentler, serene smile, her full-featured face radiating outward calm. “At least, no more than any slave to cruel Magic is.” “Cruel Magic,” Falan repeated, in a low undertone, before laughing. “Got that one right.” The black mood passed as quickly as it had arrived, unsettling in its suddenness and unpredictability. “Now, boxes, boxes, boxes! The Dawns do so love presents.” Falan was a little bit unnerving – 'Court Jester' came the thought, unbidden and fragmented, drifting in from another life, accompanied by a flash of a richly decorated, darkly painted hall, of golden chalices in which wine glowed like blood and the handsome men who danced with the beautiful ladies decided the fates of millions. Always at the edge of everything there was the Jester, a man in ridiculous harlequin motley whose moods could flip from ecstatic to despairing as easily as he could from table to chandelier. A shiver brought her back to the present with a jolt; Falan was still beaming up at her with too-blue eyes; she unloaded boxes onto him with alacrity. He caressed each of them, excited, before setting them with exacting precision on his desk, as perfectly ordered as if it had been done with a ruler and set square. He nodded, satisfied; a job well done, then beamed at Alses, that darker side of him buried beneath sunshine. He fumbled at his belt for a moment; she took a half-step back, ready, but all he did was toss her something that glittered gold and green – a kina. She blessed her Syna-given reflexes silently, catching it easily with a somewhat confused look of askance at Falan; he began to giggle, hyena-like, before coughing and pulling himself together into something approaching what a high-ranking servant of House Dawn should have been. “Your danger pay, courier,” was all he said, in lieu of a farewell, giggles breaking to the surface again from beneath his solemn façade. Alses moved at a speed that, in someone less graceful, would have been called a run, desperate to escape the slightly creepy secretary (perhaps he'd been unhinged a bit in the storm?) and the poisoned auras of the Dawn Tower both.

[Alses]

Ordinarily, Alses' next stop (and damn the plan she'd made; they were made to be revised and sometimes outright broken) would have been Mhakula's Tea-House, for the experience of a calming cup of tea and a chance to let her nerves recover, but on peering hopefully around the carved dragon-screen that shielded the entryway from the rest of Lhavit, her hopes were dashed. Every other messenger, dogsbody and general carrier in the entire city seemed to have had the same idea (or at least, so it seemed to her) and at the same time – each of the pretty red lacquer tables (and the deeper, more comfortable purple cushion-booths) was full to bursting with all manner of races, drinking tea, eating snacks, talking excitedly and loudly, dear Syna above, loudly, about the Dao sparring matches that were going on all around. Normally, the clash and rattle of sword on sword was something she could tune out easily, but now, every swing and block was accompanied by an explosion of encouragement and critique from the assembled onlookers, staccato bursts of sound with no rhyme or reason to them, quite overwhelming the normally-serene atmosphere of the place. The waitress valiantly manning the doors cast a sinking glance at Alses, one tinged with the usual awe, flavoured with regret but mostly full of dismay and despair at yet another customer coming in, wanting a table and drinks and food when there simply wasn't any left to give. Taking reluctant pity on her – she wanted to sit in peace with some nice tea to taste, blast it all – Alses shook her head with an understanding smile at the girl, and was rewarded by a beam equal to that of the sun at noon, powered by relief and thanks in equal measure. Unaccountably buoyed by this, she made her way back to the Dusk Tower for another assignment from the Monocled Taskmaster, albeit at a slower pace than she had left. If she wasn't going to have a lunch break, she'd take her time, thank you very much. Perhaps admire some of the exotic plants in people's windowboxes and gardens, let the heat of the sun knead away the residual ache in her shoulders (already fading fast in any case) and drink in some of the views for which Lhavit was justifiably famous. Every time she thought she was getting jaded to the spectacle, the city always managed to find something that would push her into wide-eyed, childlike wonder again. It might have been the sight of the sunset setting a sea of cloud afire, or a view out to infinity perfectly framed in the arches of an impossibly graceful skyglass bridge...Lhavit seemed to have an endless supply of visual delights, a balm for the soul even at its lowest ebb. Her entry into the Dusk Tower was rather more clandestine and cautious than the first time around, when she had blithely strolled in, all but whistling and with hardly a care in the world. This time, she summoned up her powers of concentration and squinted ferociously at the doors, trying to see if she could spot Mr. Secretary's distinctive aura, the one which always brought the smell of fresh ink – and cheese, too, for some reason – to her mind, lurking around. There were far too many people around to really be sure, a seething morass of all the colours of the rainbow and all the sounds of the mortal world crammed together in the atrium, but as far as she could determine, the coast seemed clear; to be on the safe side, she opened the doors only as far as was absolutely necessary and slipped inside, ducking and weaving between the mountainous piles of goods that had only got more vertiginous in her absence. The grand garden of the Dusk Tower was an oasis of relative calm in the hurly-burly of the atrium, and Alses sank herself into its leafy embrace with a sigh of relief. The feel of cool, living leaves on her sun-warmed skin, the soothing babble of water over rock replacing raucous voices, the gentle smell of life, unhurried and uncaring, in its own green and fertile way, they soothed her, centred her. Her feet moved on autopilot, taking her deeper and deeper into the garden – she didn't realise quite how deep until a familiar voice called out: “Hoy! Alses, is that ye? Need a hand 'ere, if ye're willin'!” She blinked, seeing where she was for the first time, at the edge of the artful wilderness, teetering on the brink of Master Gardener Zentris' playground. Martin was waving at her from a little further along the treeline, one hand wrapped around the bole of a good-sized fadeong tree with four other people clustered closely around. Martin nodded his head – a bow would have been impractical – as she approached, curious. “Could do wi' some o' that Ethaefal strength, if ye'll help. This tree's gotta be uprooted, and it's bein' a right petchin' bugger about it, too. Th' principal lateral roots – remember I showed ye on that nokkochi what got blowed down las' time – just won't shift.” He called over his shoulder: “Rob! Gi' Alses the axe.” The man known as 'Rob' flashed Alses an uncertain smile. “Boss, she's, well, you know...should we really be askin'-” “Ah, Alses don't mind. Fer a fine lady mage, she likes 'er plants all right. An' she may not look it, tin'ead, but I'd lay good kina on 'er beatin' you fer strength any day. Stop dawdlin', boy, I ain't gonna hold this tree f'rever!” The axe was handed over with some reluctance; Alses turned it over and over in her hands a few times, getting the weight of it, before hopping down into the hole that the half-keeled over tree was still in. The roots, at least, were immediately obvious, tangled together like fire-hoses, dark with earth and knobbly with strengthening tissues. Her first blow was not a particularly accurate one, but with the strength of her celestial form behind the swing, the majority of the gnarled mass of lateral roots parted in a spray of sticky fluid and wood chips. Alses winced – thankful no-one could see her face or the tensing of her body – as the aura of the hapless tree convulsed, a soundless shriek that brought tears to her eyes with its piercing note and sent the sensation of razors shivering up her arms. Another chop, a flash of pain in the aura, and it was done – she lent her strength again to help lift the nearly full-grown tree from its erstwhile home, even as Martin barked orders. “Now, Brom! Wrap it, wrap it!” With that incomprehensible command, the smallest of his helpers, a human girl with a dazzling smile and skin as brown as a nut, darted around with what looked for all the world like sacking, carefully cocooning the tree's rootball before sloshing lots of water over the whole assemblage. She must have looked mystified, since Martin began to spontaneously explain. “We're sendin' this one off down to the lowlands. Master Zentris and 'is friend is convinced they c'n get it t'grow outside of Lhavit, if they experiment enough. I swear, y'get sick o' the sight o' fadeong if'n you work here long enough! We wrap th' rootball in sackin' to keep the soil in, and that hessian stuff stays wet fer ages – helps keep th' tree alive, see. Fadeong always dies outside o'Lhavit, but that's no reason t'skimp on a job! After all, this'n could be Zentris' lucky combination.” Brom muttered, as an aside: “Prolly won't be, though.” Alses had to stifle a sudden urge to laugh. Martin clapped his hands together suddenly, making everyone present jump even as he smiled warmly at her. “Lemme introduce ye t' me fellows. This 'ere's Robert – from Syliras, originally,” the man who'd been reluctant about handing over the axe now gave her a respectful half-bow and a jaunty wave of his fingers “-Nishi an' Shihan – born an' bred Lhavitians, the pair o' them-” they bent into a perfect, synchronised bow “-and o'course, Brom.” The last was the diminutive human girl whose skin was as brown as a nut and who'd been bagging up the tree. Alses raised an eyebrow. “Brom?” It sounded like a nickname, or a man's name, from her (admittedly small) experience of such things. The girl flushed at the question, even though Alses had directed it at Martin, a darker stain of red rushing up her brown cheeks. “Short for Bromeliad,” she murmured, evidently embarrassed. “My parents were gardeners too – friends of Master Zentris here. They named me after their favourite plant – it's found high on trees in the tropics, and it feeds on-” Martin clapped his hands together, stopping the breathless flood of information. “Enough jaw. We've got five more o'these t'shift before we can 'ave our lunch – and I ain't puttin' that back 'cause you, Brom, couldn't stop yer mouth runnin' away with ye! Backs to it, everyone!” OOCInteresting (sort of) fact: plants do scream - in calcium - whenever you crush, walk over, pick or otherwise damage them.

[Alses]

Early afternoon saw a much more tired and rather more grubby – although happier – Alses packing the last of the trees and saplings of various sorts onto a cart bound for the rest of Kalea and beyond, mostly with the help of Brom, who was always on-hand with a surprisingly sly, though apt, comment, and a helping shoulder when the going got tough. As the fourteenth bell rang out, she stretched, luxuriantly, enjoying the feel of her bones settling back into their proper places, joining in the congratulations of the other gardeners at a hard job well done. Whilst the others wandered back to their pavilions for a convivial cup of tea with something wicked in it (an appropriately celebratory custom, she'd been told), Alses instead lolled, bonelessly, against the great bole of a kariino tree, hidden in its leafy curtains. Time passed – how much, she couldn't rightly say – but just as she was about to move and report back to Mr. Secretary – who by now was probably apoplectic – snippets of a conversation drifted to her ears. “I'm tellin' ye now, Brom, stop moonin' over the Eth.” That was enough to stop Alses dead in her tracks, surprise freezing every muscle. “What's that supposed to mean?” A decidedly sulky, defensive retort – Alses imagined the fiery Brom with hands on her hips, ready to explode at the first untoward touch. “Y'know petchin' well what I'm on about, girl. We could all see ye makin' calf-eyes at 'er all mornin' – I'd lay a 'undred kina she'm the only one who didn't notice, an' that's probably 'cause she gets them looks all the time!” “So I'm not even allowed to look now? Zintila above, if I'd known bein' a gardener meant I couldn't be flesh and blood like everyone else-” A heavy sigh. “Ah didn't mean it like that. Petchin' words ain't my strong suit. I'm jus' sayin', pining after that girl ain't worth the bother. She's Eth, Brom! I know you ain't Lhavit born, but you've bin t'Midsummer Festivals? Seen th' lady Talora, I'll wager? She don't change, not from year t'year, decade to decade. Century t'century, prolly, too. The lady Talora and lord Aysel've been here ever since the city were founded; their kind are immortal, or so people say, an' Alses is one o'them. Beautiful, aye, I'll grant ye that, like one o' those paintins' of heroes and suchlike in Tain's Studio – hell, fer all we know, she could 'ave bin one o'them!” There was a heavy, pregnant pause. “No Brom, let me finish. After she first came 'ere, lookin' at all the plants like she'd never seen 'em afore, I asked me sister's husband's cousin – th' one in the Seekers – about the Eth. Never 'ad much t'do with book-learnin', but there's some things it's useful for. Didn't learn much – y'know what them Seeker types is like – but she did say they's half-divine – or summat like that, anyway. Each an' every man jack o'them fallen from heaven. They're all pinin' after somethin' the likes of you an' I can't even hope to experience; d'ye really think she'd be interested in a tumble behind th' compost bins wi' that hangin' over her?” There was the sound of cotton on cotton; Martin had folded his arms. “'Sides, she's a mage, really. Nice girl, seems t'like plants, but I know petchin' well the gardenin' lark's just to make ends meet 'till she gets a fine educated job. Don't mean I won't teach 'er as best I can, but I ain't expectin' 'er to devote 'er life to it. She'll move on soon enough, you mark my words.” That stung – Alses' opinion of Martin took something of a dip, even more so because what he said was uncomfortably close to the mark. She might consider it a relaxing activity, something physical and menial that kept her anchored in the present, but she'd never have considered it as an actual profession, not like the Dusk Tower's dedicated gardeners. Any next words were unintelligible, obscured by a crash followed by a thunder of crates sliding from their proper places. When the shouting died down, the only snippet Alses was able to get was: “Well, I tried. Best o'luck, Brom, but just ye remember I'll be 'ere when it all goes tits up.” Alses fled, not wanting to be caught in what would very quickly become a sticky situation. Even the harried taskmaster would be better at this point. END

[Colombina]

The XP Wand Is Waved! I can feel the bustle of the moment in your thread and there's a kind of familiarity with the city and its denizens that's nice. Good work on keeping a rather rote job interesting. Also, props on highlighting the novelty of Eths. Just don't break Brom's little heart If I missed anything, let me know. Alses' Loot 2 XP Auristics 3 XP Gardening Lore of Shortcuts through Lhavit Colombina is pleased.