Communication was only the beginning. There was still more to be done — the Communication glyph was not, on its own, able to mimic anything so complex as even the [Telepathy] spell, let alone surpass the physical limitations that rustbite imposed on its victims.

But the set of glyphs they had were limited. Given time, Vex would have loved to explore the glyph system on his own; he could have spent days diving into different glyph combinations, identifying everything that worked and why.

That wasn't the plan, though.

The plan was simple.

Nobility in Elyra ruled through a majority vote, with every House agreeing to do whatever that majority vote dictated; this was primarily enforced through House Julia and House Vale — the enforcers and the military, respectively. There was a rather obvious reason Wisfield had wanted the Guild to qualify as a single noble House. With a total of sixteen noble families that all mostly voted unanimously, they would be able to effectively control the Guild through their votes.

It was a blatantly obvious maneuver, made all the more obvious by the fact that they were willing to let go of the usual requirement that a single House be blood related. Though that, too, was a rule that they often let slip...

Vex sighed.

The point was that there was an obvious hole in this plan that Wisfield never accounted for, and had no real reason to account for. New noble families were few and far between for a number of reasons; the biggest one was that it was hard to come upon a discovery significant enough to become a House without the kind of funding and resources that came from nobility to begin with. The second biggest one was that it was easy to sabotage anyone that was about to hit upon any such discovery, and steal that secret for themselves.

A few noble families held more than one secret that could qualify as their Principle.

Vex had exactly one such secret — but the nobles didn't know that. The last time Wisfield had met them was before he'd even discovered glyphs, and in the most recent meeting they'd already worked out relay glyphs. Wisfield had never had the opportunity to find out that Vex had a whole new magic —

— which meant that what Vex had here was an opportunity.

He had eight glyphs and two signs to work with, not including glyph combinations. One glyph to each family meant he could create eight new nobles; he needed another nine to overturn the majority vote, and many, many more if he wanted to actually affect the direction Elyra was taking. He didn't have enough glyphs to make the changes he wanted to.

But that was fine. He only needed to plant the seeds, now; he needed only a single family that would help him.

"Let's go downstairs," Vex said to Derivan. The armor blinked at him, surprised.

"We are leaving?" he asked. "I had assumed we would..."

"We will," Vex said. "But Communication by itself isn't going to be enough. We're going to need Ingress's help, and I want to make sure he's the right kind of person. We need to start at the right place, at least."

He hoped his plan would work. There was every chance it could backfire spectacularly.

—

Vex and Derivan found Ingress, Sev, and Misa lounging in the corner of the shop. In the time since they'd left, the three of them had apparently managed to find something in common — all of them were fascinated by a particular 'weapon' Victor had apparently come up with before he'd been taken by rustbite. It was one of his last projects, in fact.

So really, 'lounging in the corner of the shop' wasn't that accurate a descriptor at all; Ingress and Sev were both trapped in a corner, and Misa was poking at them with a massive stick.

"I feel like I should've known something like this would happen in the five minutes we were gone, but somehow I can't imagine how," Vex remarked.

"Vex!" Misa's eyes lit up. "Look at this. It's such a cool fuckin' idea. See, it's a really long stick—"

"I can see that."

"—look, you know what I mean. It's a really long stick, and there are these rotating hinged blades at the end that lock in place—"

"Please tell me this isn't a weapon used to cut people in half."

"Nope!" Misa grinned. "The blades are dull; all it does it trap someone at a distance. I can't believe something like this wasn't already in use by the Guild. We don't exactly have a lot of melee non-lethal options."

"There are problems with it," Ingress said. "Dad said it's an Earth invention, so it doesn't really account for the system. Someone with enough dexterity could unlock those blades pretty easily. Or just jump out of the hoop. We need to account for those."

"You could probably solve part of the problem by using a mana lock instead of a physical lock," Vex said thoughtfully, and he saw the spark in Ingress's eyes; the blacksmith leapt up — "Before you leave," he added hurriedly. "I need your help with something."

"Oh!" Ingress looked surprised. "Do you need a new weapon or something? You guys look pretty kitted out already, I didn't think you needed anything new from me. Though I guess some of your stuff does look a little out of date."

Vex grimaced a little. "Not with weapons," he clarified, much to Ingress's apparent disappointment. "We need help with organising people."

"What for?" Ingress frowned at them, suddenly cautious. "We've tried to organize protests before. House Julia shuts us down pretty quickly."

"Not with protesting," Vex said. He gestured towards the door — their caravan was still waiting outside, secured in a variety of spells and skills to keep the goods from being stolen. There were small, intentional security holes in those spells, in fact, but they were holes that would allow a thief to steal a loaf or two of bread if needed; nothing too egregious, and it stopped them from trying to break the whole setup entirely. "We need your help distributing food."

"Distributing—" Ingress's eyes went wide. "You guys came here with supplies?"

"Donation from the Guild, yeah," Sev said. "We were going to send it to the government for distribution, but—"

"Oh fuck thank the gods you came here," Ingress interrupted, his eyes still a little wide, but he seemed to be rapidly calming down. Vex could almost see him trying to figure out exactly how many problems he could solve with an injection of food, and where those problems were worst. "Okay, I might need some time to get everyone together, but we can definitely help. You're going to need more people than what I can gather though. You don't actually have enough food for everyone, right?"

"Not quite," Sev admitted. "We're working on figuring out the problem."

"At least someone's doing something about it," Ingress said. "I'm half covinced it's another one of those fucking no— nevermind. Don't mind me, I'm sorry. You actually have to deal with those guys, so you probably have it worse off than me."

"You don't know the half of it," Vex muttered.

"Thank you," Ingress said, catching all of them off guard with his sincerity. "I — seriously, thank you."

Sev watched Ingress for a moment. "...The problem's a bit worse than it looks, isn't it?"

"You don't know the half of it," Ingress said, echoing Vex; he shared a significant glance with the lizardkin. "The nobles aren't exactly fair with how they distribute food, and some of them don't like the thought of us redistributing that food, so some families are worse off than others. We try to help when we can, but..."

"What would you do if you had nobility, Ingress?" Vex asked suddenly. "This family, I mean?"

"I don't fucking want nobility." Ingress's tone gained a sudden sharpness to it, and he paused only when he saw the way Vex flinched. "...Sorry. That's a bit of a sore topic for me. For... a lot of us, actually. Not everyone. A lot of people still want it. But that's sort of the problem."

"The idea you can just earn nobility is a trap, yeah," Vex said with a shrug, and Ingress seemed to relax a bit. "The fact that there are only sixteen noble families after all this time should say a lot on its own. That's why I'm asking what you would do if you were one of them."

"Nothing," Ingress said. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd try. But if you had any idea of how the nobles vote... one new family isn't going to do anything. No offense. I'd sooner quit and do the work where it really matters than play around at politics."

"And if there were more than that?" Vex asked. He was glad for Ingress's answers, but also starting to hesitate; Ingress's points were good ones. "Eight? Seventeen?"

"...You'd need to get that many of us agreeing." Ingress said warily. "I know you haven't met that many of us, but we argue a lot about what we think is best. The only thing we really agree on is that this system doesn't work. It might be a start, but..."

Ingress sighed. "Two major problems," he said, his tone suddenly serious. "One is that I'm not sure I should be trusted — you barely know me. I know you haven't offered, but this conversation is obviously going in a direction, and I'd rather embarrass myself a bit in a hypothetical than risk looking like I'm not taking this seriously. More than that, I don't trust me. I try to be a good person, but I'm not immune to the shit that goes down here. I can't live here without being affected by it, you know?

"The second issue — and it's probably the bigger one — is that if you're planning on somehow making twenty different families nobles all at the same time, or even more than that, the nobles that are currently in power can and will change the rules on you. Remember, everything is enforced through Julia and Vale; the only reason they bend to the other Houses in a vote is because they agree the majority of the time, and because each House provides a service to them that's too valuable for them to risk losing. Introduce twenty Houses at once and Julia is just going to sit down and refuse to act, no matter how we vote on it. Hell, they could declare us illegitimate and just go after all the new Houses, and not a single one of us could stop them."

"The Guild might be able to." Vex hesitated even saying the words; he wasn't sure they could. Maybe Ingress was right, and this approach wasn't the right one after all; he could just show his glyphs to Karix, and force his father to both let them into the Elyran dungeon and free Riss from following in his footsteps.

He'd still make that glyph for Victor, though.

"Maybe." Ingress voice softened a bit. "To be very clear, I'm willing to risk that. But I don't know that everyone will be. I'm just warning you ahead of time. You obviously have a plan, and I'm not saying it won't work, but..."

"I want to make everyone a noble," Vex blurted, and he colored as everyone turned to stare at him; not only Ingress, but Sev and Misa and Derivan, too; the only indication of surprise on the armor's part was the slight widening of his eyes. "...Not just seventeen. It'd be the same as removing the idea of nobility entirely."

Ingress paused and narrowed his eyes slightly. "Are you saying you have a way to do that?"

"...Maybe." There was a sudden intensity in Ingress's eyes.

"Right." Ingress frowned, and Vex watched the intensity suddenly vanish from his eyes. "Let me... get in touch with some others."