Exploit

Esther walked slowly through the Sorostade city’s streets from one meeting to another, making only small steps with her high-heeled feet. Her attention was firmly buried in papers, and occasionally, she lifted her fingers to correct the glasses that were not there at all. Her eyes did not need them anymore, but habits die hard.

It was near noon, the daily peak of activity around this part of the city. Not far from here was the Fish Market, the Temple Square, the Apothecaries. And yet nobody got in Esther’s way. The crowds parted like the sea before a prophet, although in this case it was a tall man with a full beard, thick eyebrows, wearing a large, heavy belt around his waist. He too was unhurried, and unlike her, he was largely unaffected by what they had to do.

Still, she felt bad about him spending his time like this, instead of doing something more enjoyable.

‘You don’t have to be here,’ she had reminded him.

‘But I want to,’ Upperland Emissary Cobbalt had replied, and that was that.

Back in the present time, she directed him where they needed to go next.

‘Go left here, down this alley.’

Esther flicked through her notes and again shuddered with dread. One would think that having seen them everyday for the last few days would build some resistance, but it did not. This can’t be serious, she thought, looking at her list of tasks, and her attitude was even more surprising considering she had volunteered for them - but it was not because she really wanted to do them, but because she just felt like no one else would do it properly.

‘It had to be me,’ she had told Seela in a backroom conversation. It was during the discussion they had in the Town Hall with the rest of the Administration, plus Cobbalt. She was not working alone, of course. They all had put their brains together to formulate that plan. Esther was only coordinating it.

Nothing she had ever done in her life had prepared her for this, but then again, nothing prepared anyone for suddenly being in a fantasy world without a word of warning or explanation, and yet thousands were in it and lived somehow, so there was that.

When we come back to real life, I’m going to put this in my CV.

She needed to send nearly two hundred of her friends and colleagues to another continent, along with supplies, their personal effects, and their equipment, on a ship that did not exist yet, built by shipwrights they did not have, crewed by a crew they did not have. Phew. What can go wrong?

Alright. So what do we have?

We have a shipyard. Well, the kingdom has a shipyard, but we can use it. The problem is that it is on the western coast, and whatever is built there must first sail around the top of the southern continent. This will add a week to the overall plan. Therefore, the ship is the priority. We can work on other things while it’s en route to us. But there’s not much I can do about the ship from Sorostade at this point. The order has been placed. The resources have been purchased. The construction process takes a long time, but we can make it much faster by cheating and by bribes.

We also have food, and we can always get more. We have assets and we have money - in fact, all this time we had to be very careful not to spend too much and cause inflation, and we don’t know where to store loot anymore. People not only pay taxes willingly, but sometimes even give us everything they earn. Anything to go home, I guess… But the limitation we face is that everything in this world is still hand-made. Sometimes there just isn’t enough goods to buy.

We have Cobbalt to train a crew and be the captain. We have…

Enough, focus on the next step now. She flicked a page and read again what the next step on her agenda later that day was supposed to be about. She stopped, and read aloud:

‘Buy Oranges. Lots Of Them,’ she quoted the note. ‘I didn’t write that. This is not my handwriting.’

‘Yeah, it’s mine,’ Cob also stopped.

‘Why oranges?’

‘Oh, it doesn't have to be oranges. Any citrus will do.’

‘Not my point. Why buy lots of citrus fruit?’ she asked, raising her eyes up to him over the glasses she did not have. Their bodies were taller and stronger than most humans, as if to contain the powers they had within - and still she looked up at him from below. While wearing heels, too.

‘It prevents scurvy, of course!’ he smiled, lifting a finger to his teeth.

‘We can’t get scurvy, Cob. And the voyage is too short to develop that in baseline humans,’ Esther crossed out the task from the plan.

‘Come on, it would be funny…’

‘No.’

—

Seelastraxx stood by a westward window in the Town Hall’s small conference room. It was for the Administration only, and it was on the third floor. Above it was only the attic. Downstairs they had a much larger chamber with rows of benches to accommodate dozens in case a larger topic affecting the community was to be discussed. The half-moon table was behind her, stacked with all kinds of papers and books the Administration needed to work, although most of it was Krush’s. Maps, plans, designs, costs, estimations… The man left those everywhere he went like cat shed hair.

Down below and outside the building life, such as it was, went on. People, Players and locals, went about their business, shopping for food or clothes, meeting friends, laughing, even going on dates. Perhaps it was an illusion, Seelastraxx wondered, because those who were too deep into frustration, sadness, and exasperation were usually out of sight.

Or permanently bed-ridden and absent-minded, like those after whom Hestia so self-lessly cared.

Still, it was far better to see the cheerful side. There was something picturesque about all this, something… fantastic.

There were people in the building - people whom the Administration hired to maintain the Town Hall such as a clerk and a maid or two - but she was left alone, thinking those thoughts, since Esther, Oneiron, Krush, and Teec had gone to do their things. One would think she looked lonely there, but she had wine to keep her company - in bottles inside her quarters, and currently in her hand. Besides, of all the people Seelastraxx could never complain about lacking company. She hardly ever walked alone anywhere. It was not possible, once someone recognized her.

Over the red, blue, and purple rooftops in the distance she could see the spires and bell towers of the Temple Quarter, and the Cathedral’s steep A-framed roof. It was there Pontifex Vivaro resided, much like she resided in the Town Hall. Has their rival been there right now, looking back east, and wondering the same thing Seelastraxx was?

Will they keep their word?

An uneasy deal was struck, brokered by a minister sent by Lord Regent Tepper in secrecy. The claw of the Great Dragon Molasterion and the Holy Lance of Yshier that likely was still embedded in the beast’s flesh, in exchange for the teaching of Eonian language.

The challenge was great, the reward was unclear, the continued stay in this world was maddening, and the alliance of convenience was tenuous. The people down below her window, out in the streets, appeared to all work together one way or another, but not a shred of her believed that everyone was pleased to hear that their next step towards leaving that world could very well take weeks, and it was only a step in a larger plan at best. They had to be patient.

‘This better work,’ Seelastraxx said to her pale reflection in the window’s glass, narrowing her eyes. She had never been a patient woman.

As if on que, someone knocked at the door. Three confident, measured taps of a gloved hand. There were no footsteps to be heard before that. ‘Come in,’ said Seelastraxx. Whoever it was, they made it past Kiji, Oneiron’s appointed doorman, so they either had an appointment or did not need one.

A black-clad figure slid in, hooded, but with strands of blue hair flowing down by the collar. She made almost no sound, which was all the more impressive considering the wearer’s boots were not the soft type of shoes one would expect from a stealthy professional, but instead were somewhat elegant leather boots with a respectable heel to them and definitely hard soles. And yet, the slender woman used them in stealth, a blend of style and function. She could make her footsteps heard, if she wanted to. Seelastraxx noticed all of that. At that moment, she knew she was dealing with a kindred spirit and received the Rogue with a delicate lift of the corner of her lip.

‘You asked for me,’ Sinistic said in an oddly pleased voice, as if she had been waiting for this moment and it finally came. She removed her hood.

‘I have. I heard you have all the talent and none of restraint.’