The Ogre Strength Fairy and the Eldest 'Son'-Chapter 500 - The Organization That Failed To Protect A Single Cold Shield, pt1
Harbors all smelled the same... and this one smelled exactly as Corde remembered it. Salty air, fish *everything*, tar on timber, and the mustiness of rope in various states of ’storm weathered’. It had been seventy-four years since she had stood on this particular dock and watched gulls circling above fishing boats. Designs of craft that looked remarkably unchanged despite the passage of so much time.
Boots turned and trod away on worn pier planks, because she had crossed the great sea with more purpose than to take in the sights of yet another port of call. The ship docked behind her, the Stormcalmer, rocked gently in its berth as the crew she’d spent too many months with moved to unload cargo that she’d been paid premium rates to protect during the crossing.
Pirates had foolishly tried their luck only thirteen days out from the eastern continent. Their largest mistake had been assuming that a lone swordswoman on the roster, traveling in such modest accommodations as a freight ship instead of a private vessel, would be easy prey. They certainly had not expected their rudder to freeze - or their many sails to be slashed to ribbons after she came out on deck and crossed the single grappling line that had been set.
’I stop wearing my battle dress and wear my hair differently and people can forget who I am.’
The shouting near her now were local dock workers and not pirates. Calling instructions and jeers in their regional accent, with certain vowels stretched in the way that marked them as natives of the maritime territory of her homeland. She’d spent years smoothing it from her own speech, replacing it with the much more neutral standard of the largest continent. After the Iralev adoption, anyway. Now the sound of it was crashing like the most unwelcome nostalgia.
Stirring memories she’d crossed an ocean to confront - and once crossed it the other way in the middle of the first Descent of her life to evade. A place where she’d been shaped and broken by what was then long term betrayal. Where she’d been edged and deceived towards becoming something harder than others in most ways but ultimately more brittle towards a single kind of pressure. Voidlings could not affect her mental state any longer, but Illusions and other spiritual manipulations still very much could.
As she made her way toward land, a cultivator serving as dockmaster approached. He held a clipboard in hand, eyes sharp with the suspicion that officials developed after a great deal of time dealing with other cultivators who thought port rules didn’t apply to them. The type of man to offer friendly advice that did not come off so friendly. She kept her Frost suppressed despite the irritation of being stopped already.
"Business in the city, traveler?"
"Personal matters. I was born here. How was the last Descent?"
Wariness gave just a bit of way to the recognition of a fellow veteran. His eyes traced the line of her weapon and the exact distance she kept. Warriors could tell one another at a glance, but few were as sharp as a sheathed blade thirty three months after the war began - or twenty seven after it ended. Most had eased themselves down by now and went back to their families.
"Same as everywhere else, I imagine. Lost some good people. You fought?"
"Fourth campaign. Across the sea."
He stamped something on his board and gestured for her to move on. For he was a man who could take the same advice he would give others - and his advice to them would be to not get in this woman’s way.
"Well. Welcome home, then. Watch yourself in the Guild Quarter. Some of them have been... aggressive about their recruitment the last few months. Just coming back or not, you’re an unknown face."
Corde nodded her thanks and moved from worn planks to worn stone. From docks into the lower city. Each step forward felt instead like walking backward through time, even if the city itself had clearly moved forward in a few ways. New buildings crowded against the old foundations. The poverty stricken lamplighters had been replaced with a series of more sophisticated essence-work than she remembered. The Youth Guild’s distinctive banner even flew from a building that looked like it had been rebuilt within the last twenty years.
She was sure that all of the updates were due to Voidling damage in one way or another. For as she knew it, this city - or rather, the Elementalist nobility controlling it - had always held a very, very strong habit of not fixing what was not yet completely broken. They were also not big on spending on sigilists to do *any* work at all. Especially if it’s something that the lower class of mortals could do for a pittance.
With so little change, Corde was sure the places where Instructor Velauyn once existed still remained. The woman who had taken a trusting ten-year-old double-enchanter and slowly, methodically, turned her into something else entirely. A useful weapon for some sort of plan... and now her Shield Astralism, and the spiritual techniques she’d held tight to for the sixty years since she learned them, felt inadequate. A skill that let her charge forward even when others were being sunk down by Hivemind interference.
As she ducked into a small crevice of an alley to take a moment, her hand rested on her sword hilt as Frost danced out of her bootsoles in emotional agitation. The experience at the Goltbred Estate during the Saltfire infiltration attempt, trapped in the starscape illusion ’artifact’ that had been used, had made her feel more vulnerable than ever. It didn’t matter that she could tell herself that she’d broken the manipulation from the Instructor well before her current level of power and training. That she had a good resistance to the sloppy spiritual intrusions of any Enchanter and early Primalist.
The third Aspect that Velauyn had not known about from the first Youth Guild testing phases was ultimately her downfall. For Corde had grown up as an Elementalist... and Frost was her first known power. Which made the second that she had been *targeted* for on retesting, once she broke through the accumulation stage... her Anti-Essence Physique. She’d been so proud of the rare ability when it manifested. Especially after three years of attending the Guild, finally getting some interest from a member of a group that she might join when she turned thirteen.
It was a big step forward from ’one of many’ young cultivators. Especially one looked a bit down upon because of mortal parent origins. Many of the other instructors had praised her future directly, calling her promising to her face and saying she’d go far if she just trained well.
’But only Velauyn had smiled and offered me private lessons.’
Forcing the memory aside, Corde hez Iralev began trudging to the place it all went down. To search the room where she’d learned that trust could be a weapon you handed others. And that some immoral people held it tight over your neck with incredible glee. However, she hadn’t come to drown in the bitter memories - she had come to freeze them for good. Crystallize them into some form that she could look at more objectively than before.
To finally face things with more heart and courage than her sixteen year old self. The girl running from a murder of passion so hard... that she became a Hero.
