Tall, Strong, and Experienced
----
Talos and Casiama walked through the lively main street of the town, the seventh they have crossed since leaving Aindarna behind. It was the winter solstice, a time normally reserved for feasting and celebration before huddling by warm fires for the upcoming cold months. Talos now had another year of age, having been born on the festive night thirty-three years ago in Evorus.
Casiama displayed just a hint of glee when he had told her. The pair shared the same name day, and the elf elucidated to him how blessed they were to share it with many of her divines.
Talos found himself skeptical of her words; the day was merely the marking of another year to the man. A night of looking back on all of your failures and accomplishments before striking out once again to discover more of each, having hopefully learned from the past.
The pair should have been carousing with the local townsfolk, sharing in their laughter and dance as they celebrated another successful harvest. They instead walked in the footsteps of havoc and woe. Thirteen random suicides. They didn't know these unfortunate people, but the pair knew that they hadn't likely deserved their fate. It seemed the rest of the world worked tirelessly to prove its ignorance as it declared the suicides the unfortunate-but-probable acts of destitute peasantry.
Talos had by now drawn a crude image of the girl he sought, Rayya, with soot and papyrus. Through each town, each grizzly act of suicide, someone nearby had pointed them in their next direction when he asked about the drawn girl. All signs pointed westward.
Perhaps she was going to Catriona, where Talos had dropped her off all those years ago...
~~
Talos and Rayya sat on one side of a large, oak table, across from a trio of aging sorceresses. Talos had brought Rayya to the fabled College of Catriona, thinking it the best possible place for her, for three reasons.
One, Rayya's naturally empathetic powers meant that she was magically attuned, which could allow her to become a powerful sorceress one day.
Two, Catriona was at the far edge of the continent, far away from her father the Marquis of Skymarch. They had been harried by his mercenaries for months now, unable to sleep soundly lest they be ambushed once more.
Three, and most importantly, the College of Catriona protected their own. No men were allowed inside its walls, and only sorceresses who study or have studied at the College could possibly enter. Talos held Rayya's hand as she shook, waiting for the sorceresses across the table to make their decision.
"Your daughter certainly has great potential, Varian," the sorceress to the right reassured nasally, addressing Talos with his pseudonym lest Rayya be tracked here. "Empathy like hers hasn't been seen around here in a decade, at least. We'd gladly welcome her, and I can promise we have a great School of Enchantment on our grounds."
Talos smiled, gripping Rayya's hand. "Thats... that's great. Thank you," he choked out, then cleared his throat.
"There's still the matter of coin, Varian," another sorceress spoke up coldly.
There always is,
Talos thought to a nervously giggling Rayya.
"Tuition here at the College is no simple ask. And I'm afraid a man of your..." the hag looked Talos up and down, tutting once, "
simple
background would find it hard to pay it."
"How much could it possibly be?" Talos asked indignantly. The man had plenty of coin saved from his days as a mercenary, and no amount could be too high for Rayya.
"Sixty golden Imperials a year," the sorceress in the middle spoke up suddenly. "And we'll require the payment in full, for the first two years."
Talos' jaw dropped at the sum, refusing to believe that the College wasn't some intricate ploy at extortion rather than education. You could buy a row of townhouses on the waterfront for that.
"One-hundred and twenty Imperials..."
Rayya gripped his hand, reassuring him as well she could with a waivering voice and a smile.
"It's okay, Talos. I don't need to go here. We can... keep exploring, instead. We'll make it fun, I'm sure."
Talos shook his head, gazing at her hopelessly optimistic smile. He could drain his accounts in Evora, Tardia, and Catriona, he knew. It would take a few months to travel, of course...
Talos raised his sight to the three sorceresses. "I accept. But I don't have it all on me, right at the moment. I will need to travel to Redstone to retrieve half the sum. But the other half is here at the central bank I assure you, sorceress."
The woman smiled warmly from across the table. "Great. We'll accept her immediately, of course. If you want us to teleport you to Redstone-"
"No," Talos interjected. "That's alright. I'll walk."
The sorceress smiled in reply, then looked towards the young blonde girl. "Very well. Welcome to the College, Rayya."
~~
Talos brought a hand to his chin in the present and shrugged.
Possible
, he supposed.
--
Sigismund arrived in the noisy atmosphere of a celebrating Imperial town. It was the winter solstice, a night to drink and reminisce of another year gone by.
Sigismund had fifty years of age now, an amount that few of the celebrating peasants around him could ever hope to achieve. It didn't feel like much of an accomplishment, now, having just lost his lucrative contract with the Grey Suns Company. His career as security for a trading vessel had not even lasted half a year before he had been fired.
He tipped his mead glass to his lips, trying to savor its sweetness as he wallowed in his own despair, the happy songs of the revelers doing nothing for his mood. What was he to do now?
Sigismund had been right, of course. What self-respecting merchant company sends a transport into certain doom? The transport had been selected as bait by haughty chief-something-officers to draw out the pirates, and sailed alone with a guard half its intended size.
Sigismund did the job, though. He slaughtered the pirates as they boarded, twenty-four in all at last count. But as the transport returned to Rinoc in victory, Sigismund found himself furious with the Grey Suns' leadership. He barked furiously at them while the rotund man calling himself Leonard counted coins into his pouch before tearing up their contract.
Apparently, questioning your superiors didn't get you any favors with the Grey Suns Company. Perhaps it was the insults.
"This seat taken, old man?"
Sigismund lifted his eyes from his mead, and scanned the lively hall he sat in. The seat opposite him was perhaps the only one still left untaken. His eyes lifted to the cute girl in front of him, a short blonde-haired girl wearing an even shorter skirt but one shade darker than her skin. He offered the seat with an open palm before the maiden fell onto it with a thud, her drink sloshing violently as it hit the table. She was far too pretty to be seen sitting with a curmudgeon like himself, he thought. The girl smiled sweetly towards him as the notion passed his mind.
"Enjoying the festivities?" Sigismund asked, attempting to make conversation with his now table-mate.
"Ugh. These people are all so dirty, I swear. You think they'd at least find a chance to bathe for the biggest holiday of the year."
Sigismund smiled back, finding the jest endearing. "Now now, they can't help it. What with the doing nothing all day now that the harvest has been picked," he laughed, the cute girl responding with a somehow cuter giggle. Sigismund successfully stopped himself from giving her assets more than a quick glance as she sipped her mead carefully.
"It's just hard for a
cute
, lonely girl like me to find a proper man around these parts. You know what I mean?"
