After an awkward wakeup call from Rethi, the day had managed to get itself into a nice rhythm of quiet.

I mostly wandered around Crossroads’ main streets and a few of the higher-class areas that I was inexplicably allowed to walk around in, mostly because of how I dressed. After the countless social events and connections that I made at them, I could start to see the looks of recognition from people as I walked by.

It was mostly the other higher-class residents, but I also managed to gain a few gazes from the more common folk as well. I can’t say exactly why, apart from the general mode of dress and the confidence in which I held myself, but they recognised me on the streets and typically sought to steer clear.

Fair enough.

Most of the social connections I had were ones I had forged with extreme haste, and I had used many of them to further my quest for information about the Shadow Walkers, as well as some healthy information about the state of Crossroads’ as a whole. The city was doing as you’d expect, with merchants throwing around money like nobody’s business and paying off the officials that are supposed to represent the interests of the residents and the people that work within Crossroads.

It’s not a pretty sight, that’s for sure. Crossroads is effectively eating itself alive, with corruption so prevalent and the upper-class citizens holding all the real power, the actual residents and workers hold almost none. Left to just flounder through life as gangs form under the oppression that the residents feel, especially migrants from somewhere even worse, like Vahla.

I couldn’t really call upon those connections right now, it all being a little too much too soon, but I’d planted the seeds in them strategically. Currently, the lynchpins of my little insurrectionist ideals were Lucae Milna, Valeri Ephars, Tek, Lauka, and possibly Garrian and Illias.

It was hard to plan an insurrection, to be fair. It was really all about who you knew, and how responsive they were to your cause, and what they could do to aide it.

Lucae Milna, while the black sheep of his family and much of the merchants that fashioned themselves as nobility, held an amazing amount of power over the dispossessed. At his parties, you were likely to see ten different people, all of them coming from vastly different backgrounds and social strata. The fact that the man, though seemingly unaware of his social brilliance, was capable of pulling together people with wildly different sensibilities and make them work together to create a totally unique atmosphere—though laden with sex and drugs as it was.

Valeri Ephars holds power in the real courts, amongst those who are the sons and daughters of the rich and powerful. For now, most of them are not too dissimilar to Lucae, though he certainly would dislike the comparison. The children have mostly been brow beaten into keeping their nose out of adult business, halting any true understanding that they might have over their family’s riches that miraculously appeared in a generation’s time.

Tek and Lauka were similar in their usefulness, all things considered. Tek held contacts with those of the lower and working classes that wanted to see the status quo shift, and Lauka orbited Shed’s gang, possibly the most volatile element within Crossroads.

Illias and Garrian were more complicated than that, more of a subtle political move than any grand statement. While the insurrection turns the people on the massive mercantile families that control the flow of money through Crossroads, Illias and Garrian will subtly remove themselves from the situation altogether. They’ll be doing the effective equivalent of insider trading, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that the insurrection I’ll be launching will, at the very least, damage the Bel-Far Conglomerate’s operations in Crossroads.

Yet, even with all the connections I’d forged, I was still lacking critical contacts in many areas, ones that would make sure that I can coordinate things to cause the least amount of actual damage. I don’t want there to be what amounts to a civil war within Crossroads, something that only the mercantile conglomerates would benefit from.

The Brauhm Empire, thankfully, hasn’t revealed itself to be a big player in Crossroads just yet, at least not in government action. The merchants in Crossroads still likely hung at the coattails of those in Brauhm, if they weren’t already what amounted to a shell company.

I turned down the maintained main streets towards the western path, making my way towards the Skinned Lizard with some haste. I’d spent the day outside just walking aimlessly and I thought that Rethi might have some interesting tales to tell from his days training Valeri into something half competent.

Oh boy, was that an understatement. Tales weren’t all that Rethi had for me that day.

The first sign of there being something up was the mood that I picked up within the cloud of empathic sense that always hung around me. The closer I got to the Skinned Lizard, the more hostility and tenseness I felt in the surroundings, growing into something stiflingly powerful by the time I was at the door of the inn.

‘Closed.’ A little sign read on the front door, a little sign that I’d never seen even once. The Skinned Lizard, as far as I’m aware, has always been open, even in the dead of night you can sometimes hear the sound of a new patron’s boots walking wearily to their newly acquired bed.

I ignored the sign and walked into the inn, finding it empty despite it being time for the dinner rush. I followed the feeling of tense hostility easily, quickly entering into the very same room that I had the meeting with the Skinned Lizard’s staff oh so long ago.

The room was packed with people, even more than there had been last time. The whole Skinned Lizard crew was there, even including Venn, the Gek information broker. Rethi and Alena were both present, Rethi sitting stoically in his chair and Alena sitting just to his left, obscured from the man that Rethi was sending his fiery gaze towards.

On the other side of the table sat a middle-aged man wearing a hostile mask and a dark-skinned woman just beside him who I instantly recognised as Valeri.

I stopped still as I entered the room, the door thumping closed behind me as I glanced across the room’s inhabitants.

Tek looked extremely uncomfortable, though remaining a powerful presence in the room despite the clash of the two other egos. Gehne, the Gek woman that I’d seen very little of in recent weeks, looked about ready to disappear from the room the second a fight broke out, and Tenra just looked confused.

On the other hand, Venn totally dismissed any worry about the situation he might have as soon as he saw me standing just in front of the door.

“Master Maximilian!” He called smarmily, breaking the room’s tension ever so slightly, “Wonderful to meet you again, you’ve been making all sorts of news as of late!” He smiled as best as he could with his mundane brown reptilian features. I rose my eyebrow questioningly, but I just waved off the pseudo-compliments easily.

“Thank you, Venn. Though I think we have more pressing matters to attend to?” I asked with a gentle smile as I sat in a chair separate from the three parties already stationed around the table. Rethi and Alena sat to my left, Valeri and the new face sat to my right, with the Skinned Lizard staff sitting directly ahead of me.

“Maximilian!” Valeri almost gasped, apparently not realising that I’d come through the door until the Gek man had called out to me, “Yeram and Rethi are–” She began, rising from her chair, but was stopped when a cold tone sliced through her sentence with a deadly precision.

“Sit, Lady Ephars.” The man who could only be Yeram hissed. Valeri thumped back into her chair with a scolded look on her face. I spared a glance in this Yeram person’s direction, taking in his form and posture.

He was a warrior, that was for sure. I could say so without a doubt by just the way he sat. If it was that obvious, then he was probably pretty powerful. Tek was similar, though whether they sat on the same level of power was something entirely different.

“Master Max.” Rethi said stoically as he glared at the other man. “Yeram is a Shadow Walker.”

The room froze, everyone’s emotional states peaking to whole new heights. Instead of Gehne just considering running from the room, she was subtly shifting the weight onto her legs from her chair, ready to leap up the wall and climb out the room through a small window.

I could feel as emotional states began to tend towards their weapons, Yeram, Rethi, Tek, and even Tenra all tried to subtly grasp at a weapon they either had hidden on their person or was already sitting at their side.

I searched the room’s inhabitants one last time before feeling a flicker of anger flare to life within me as I stared. The growl left my lips as my domain billowed out from my body, dampening everything with Safety and feelings of the Hearth.

“That’s enough.”

The power in my voice was unmistakably divine, just as all divine power was unmistakable. It stunned the room into even more silence, just now with every eye trained on me instead of at each other. I made eye contact with each person quickly before speaking again.

“There will be no fighting.” I decreed with absolute surety, and I knew that each one of them felt the impact of the words in their heart. I was the arbiter of the conversation now, and there was no-one here that could challenge my rule.

After a moment, there were murmurs from each of the people around the table, all of them giving some sign of agreement.

“Good.” I stated definitively, “What is the problem we are having?” Looking between Rethi and the supposed Shadow Walker, Yeram, I subtly prompted them to speak.

“Yeram believed that I was going to kill Valeri and attacked me.” Rethi added his statement and I nodded before turning to Yeram and letting my eyes bore into his own.

“I attacked to protect Valeri from the Divine Sword that he holds.” I nodded again, but I didn’t just take their simplistic statements as truth. I delved deeply into their emotional state, allowing me to determine truth from fiction, what parts of the story have been hidden and are being obfuscated from my view.

“Yeram.” I began in an almost judge-like manner, “You knew that Rethi was not going to harm Valeri. Instead, you had come to the conclusion that Rethi was a threat, connected to me, and decided that he must be removed to mitigate the effects on the Ephars household.”

The man’s eyes went wide, the first true display of significant emotion that I’d seen on him as of yet, and not something that was likely to come around all too often. I could tell that I’d hit the nail on the head, for lack of a better phrase, and the fact that I could pull so much from just the way that the man felt from his own statement and Rethi’s statement made me understand why priests of the Hearth might be called Peace Bringers.

I turned then to Rethi, whose face was full of smug, and began to speak again. “Rethi. You knew that Yeram was there and intentionally baited him out of hiding. You didn’t consider that he’d legitimately try to kill you and didn’t heed the warnings.”

I stared at the severely chastised boy, feeling a degree of unsettledness from Valeri, the idea of Rethi being the trainer that he’d fashioned himself as, was slowly crumbling. I crossed my arms and turned away from both of them.

“In short, you’re both being idiots.” Though I turned to Yeram with a dark intensity, “But one of you is being a murderous idiot.” I could almost feel the shiver go down the Shadow Walker’s spine as I enunciated the grave words.

“Now,” I continued neutrally, heedless of the tonal whiplash, “it’s seems that today is just one of those days that fate has to intervene to bring a group together. Each of us is going to have some part to play very soon, and you will have to decide what you’ll be involving yourself in.” I looked over the Skinned Lizard’s staff, all of which felt suddenly very out of their depth as they realised they were surrounded by people far more powerful than they had expected.

“Yeram, Valeri,” I addressed the two strangers within the room, drawing their uncertain gazes, “we will talk about your allegiances and where and who they lay with very soon.” Valeri swallowed deeply, nodding quickly for both her and the man beside her. I nodded out of polite affirmation.

“Good.” I connected with Tek’s eyes, letting a warm smile crack the stony mask I’d been wearing, “Well, that was tiring. How about we have dinner while we talk?” I asked rhetorically, though the powerful Tiliquan man nodded and motioned for the other staff to follow him, partly to help prep for a big meal, and also to get them out of the still somewhat tense room.

“Oh!” I called out before Gehne managed to get out of the room, making her turn back to me with a little dread in her heart, “Do you mind if I specifically order the stew I had a few nights ago?” She nodded, almost so deep that it was a bow, and left the room hastily, leaving me alone with the four others in the room. Venn having left along with the staff.

“Big day, hey?” I said to Alena, a cheeky smile brightening my face. Alena rolled her eyes so severely that I thought she might actually hurt something, but the frayed nerves I could sense in her emotions healed ever so slightly.

I sighed; this was going to be all kinds of interesting.