>>5801827>>5801814>>5801786>>5801768>>5801764>>5801682>>5801520>>5801511You glanced at over at where your father was keeping watch. If he had been listening in (he had been), he was also unwilling to admit to this, or to give you any advice. In retrospect, that was possibly for the best; if he was good with a sword, it didn’t mean you respected the man’s intelligence or social savvy. Instead, you addressed Logan Pearce as you ever had, and as he deserved to be: with the whole truth.
“There’s something rotten in the Mage’s Tower,” you told him. “It’s centred on the Henzlers, and it began twenty years ago… Quite possibly in Goblintown.”
You told him the story, bit by bit, and watched his expression shift from surprise to confusion to alarm and to a grave concern… And then, with wry humour, to amusement.
“You must really like this girl,” he noted.
“It isn’t like that!” you protested. “I don’t even know if…”
“If she’s in on it?” he asked. “Whatever ‘it’ is?”
You said nothing, and so Pearce sighed, and carried on speaking:
“Well, I don’t know… it’s not a lot to go on, really. What do you even KNOW for sure? That the Archmage was AROUND for a long time, and grabbed an opportunity when she saw it? We don’t know that she was in league with any of the terrorists or goblins, or even that the terrorists and goblins were working together, or ANYTHING like that. And where do the rat monsters and snake people fit in?”
“Come on!” you’d protested weakly, chafing a little at your friend’s uncharitable assessment. “The Archmage just SUDDENLY adopts a child who sometimes has snake eyes and decides to make that girl her heir, RIGHT AROUND the time people are getting all worried about lizard-people and animal-people? The Archmage who was HEAD CHIMERICIST, specializing in mixing and matching animals? And then her major rival, a DEMONOLOGIST, vanishes… Right as a demon cult spring up? She gets made Archmage after those ‘rogue demonologists’ kill the last one, the terrorists and animal-people all vanish, and then the Inquisition AND the Demonology faculty are just… ‘Reorganized’ out of existence, so nobody can look in on it?”
“Or you’re looking at a lot of different, unrelated events and connecting them up because you got high at my barn party on crazy foreign root-powder and went nuts.”
You glared, but you felt your certainty waffle… At least enough to look away, and to lower your voice as you offered your friend—your dear friend, who HAD been shot and poisoned all for your sake, only to be rejected and likely hurt by you—an out.
“I know it’s a long-shot,” you said. “I don’t.. REALLY know anything. That’s why I need to FIND OUT. But you… You’ve done a lot already. You can… Go, if you want.”
