(TLO) Chapter 110: A Terrifying Analogy (Patreon)

The houses were quite literally self-explanatory.

When the car dropped Seth off at his destination, he found himself standing in front of a cavalcade of houses lined side by side. Each one was different from the other, numbers boldly written on massive placards handing just above their doors.

At first he assumed there existed some kind of hierarchy amongst them, evident in, perhaps, their numbers. However, by the twenty-eight house he was beginning to believe otherwise. He’d seen houses too big and boisterous to belong to anyone agreeing to believe themselves less than anyone else. Some houses were small and compact, most likely unable to house more than two bedrooms and a single living room.

Besides the placards that dangled from their doors, the only other similarity they bore was in their color. All of them were the brightest white, unstained and unblemished. As impossible as it seemed, it was a fact he could not deny.

As he walked between houses, his minds attended his surroundings with awe.

For a place so full and bountiful, it sure is quiet, one pointed out.

Seth simply nodded as he passed the thirty-fifth house. Chances were the silence was attributed to some silence rune. It was necessity amongst the elite and powerful. As a child, his father had had one in his study. He thought back on it and found himself shamed at his inability to recall its look.

We can just pick the one in house fifty-eight.

“You assume it would be in plain sight,” he mumbled, as he passed house forty-two.

Don’t you think this might be too easy, another mind opined. We mean, just a house and a number? No code to decipher, no signs and symbols.

There is a password, another thought.

And there’s no complexity, even in that. It’s like they didn’t even have the strength to try. How will you even know who you’re supposed to meet.

“As secretive as they are,” Seth said, adjusting again as his weapons weighed him down, “I don’t recall them teaching anything that required any real brain power. I doubt they can come up with any reasonable codes.”

“Let’s just get to the house and go from there,” he added as he drew closer to his destination.

It took him over thirty minutes to get to house fifty-eight. When he did, he could not hide his disappointment. The building was on the small side. If it had more than one bedroom and living room, then it would mean their sizes would be consequential. Was this what the seminary could afford or was it some ploy as proving inconspicuous.

Maybe your handler’s just renting the place, one of his minds thought.

“Maybe,” he grumbled.

While the seminary was still giving him a part of the power he had so desperately craved when he was younger, he found himself wondering if he would have riches, too. It might be selfish to seek out such things, however, what point was there to power if he could not live a life getting the things he wanted. He doubted the seminary as an institution was poor. After all, poverty would fail to explain how the seminary always kept them so well fed with constant meals the size of which Lords only put out during banquets and feasts.

With a repressed curiosity, he stepped up to the door of the building and knocked gently on its brown wood. The sound it made was hollow, the wood weak. He thought to knock once more but chose patience instead. In truth, he feared applying too much pressure would somehow damage the door.

A small house with a door of cheap wood, one of his minds chuckled. If that doesn’t scream ‘I require financial assistance’ then we don’t know what does.

Ignoring his mind, he knocked again. This time it was louder, and he ignored his fear of damaging the cheap wood. Its dull brown did not even have the decency of being polished. It irked him, and reminded him that despite all his time at the seminary he was still the child of a Lord. A certain level of class still lived in him.

There a silent shuffle from inside. The sound of a reluctant approach, a person unwilling to perform a task they felt they had no need to perform.

Outside, the sun was hot but hit Seth’s skin with a certain tepid temperature that reminded him he was of Iron authority. It was something that was becoming increasingly easy to forget. As a child, Iron always seemed like another world. To be souled and powerful. He’d seen Derek get up from blows that would’ve put any man down when he was Iron.

But as much as Iron had seemed like another world, he had watched Jonathan accomplish too many feats as a Gold mage. Iron was another world, but gold—to him—was godhood. It was the authority that existed as no more than an unattainable dream for a boy with a weak head and a failing arm.

But not anymore. Gold was something that now seemed, at the least, inevitable. And with the number of Barons the seminary had stashed away, he could see himself becoming one. There was no doubt they knew the secrets of Barony. They would share it if he proved promising enough. And he would.

The door of the house opened after a moment long enough to knock thrice more. When it did, it was to a man as tall as Igor. He had a clean shaved head and a thick beard that spotted streaks of grey in it. He’s complexion had a natural tan Seth did not think was a result of too much sunlight.

The first words to leave the man’s mouth froze Seth momentarily.

“You’re too short,” he said.

Seth looked at him in a daze, courted by mild anger, wondering what that had to do with anything, and it was a moment before he found his tongue.

“I hate the sun today,” he said. “Can you spare me sometime?”

The man’s brows furrowed, and his eyes wrinkled. “It’s not even that…” the words trailed off in sudden realization. The man stroked his beard and watched Seth with a knew glint in his eyes.

He took in his shoulder length hair held back in a wolf’s tail. It moved down, then to the side. He took stock of the swords strapped to his hips, then the hilts poking from over his shoulder.

His gaze settled on Seth’s eyes and he nodded slightly. It was the only form of compliment he showed.

Seth found himself not particularly liking the man. However, he was of the opinion that if he could survive under Igor, he could survive under anyone.

“Why?” the man asked, finally.

Relief flooded Seth for a single moment before he realized the question was a legitimate one requiring an answer. He opened his mouth to give one and nothing came out. He closed it gently, quietly. When he tried again, he allowed a response grow in his mind first. It took him only seconds to realize he did not have one.

“Are you always this poor at conversations?” the man asked after a while. “Or did the seminary simply do poorly at teaching you social skills.”

The answer was obvious. “I don’t think they know much in the way of social skills.”

The man chuckled, it revealed a baritone deeper than the one he spoke with. “Come inside,” he said, then turned and strolled in, leaving the door open behind him.

Seth panned his attention around him and found no one, then he stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

Unsurprisingly, the inside was as disappointing as the outside. The house was clean, which was a plus in some way, but the living room held too little space. It proved only enough to hold two sofas placed opposite each other before it began begging for space. He found himself shuffling through between them as a child would between two adults, with care and discomfort.

“Do you think it was safe to speak of the seminary so casually out in the open, Reverend?” he asked his handler who was now seated in a larger room behind a black desk that came up to Seth’s navel.

The man made a nonchalant gesture, waved an uncaring hand. “First, to assuage your worry. Every house here has a silence rune. It doesn’t do much in the way of things, but it conceals sounds well enough. I could butcher a three-ton rhinoceros in this room and have it roar out to its rhino gods and no one outside these walls would hear a thing.”

That was a terrifying analogy Seth refused to address.

“As for my name,” the man continued. “It’s Jim. I’m a Gold mage and I’m the seminary’s eyes and ears in this part of the world.”

“I’m—”

“Seth,” Jim cut him off. “I know. I’ve already been informed of your arrival. But you’re an odd one. For someone who only stood out in the test of the hunt under Emriss, you carry too many swords. I would’ve thought you’d fancy guns, carry perhaps a single blade even. But here you are outfitted with four swords.”