Chapter 219

Cecilia had been able to get approval from the embassy pretty easily. It seems that Winethorn was happy to take the smith and her apprentice in, my guess is that she already realized that they would be a good cover story for us when we leave town. Cecilia hadn't asked for many details, she was still busy with some other stuff, but she was able to get us permission to bring Tenna and her apprentice in without any issues. Sibyl and Raya decided to stay with Tenna at the embassy while we headed out to meet with the Order of Lilith. It was better to leave some people with them even if they were protected at the embassy.

Silva and Lorriene joined up with us and soon we were walking through the closed bazaar toward a nondescript house in the southern quarter. A glance at the small inn we had once stayed at showed that it had been raided and ransacked since we left. Several town guards and a Tamin priest stood nearby watching the building. I was unsure if it was because the building was suspiciously abandoned or if they had somehow connected it to the murder of the King. Luckily, no one had connected the place with any of us yet though. We had received some trouble at the checkpoints but when the Tamin priests noticed most of our group had auras that could only belong to demon hunters we were suddenly treated with a lot more respect and let through more quickly. They believed us to be hunting down demons alongside them and I didn't find it necessary to correct them.

"We're almost there," Lorriene told us.

I nodded and continued to follow her through the confusing alleys of the southern quarter. It was almost as if the area had been designed intentionally for lawlessness, it stood in such stark contrast to the rest of the city. We finally reached a fairly average plain stone building. Among the other buildings in the area, it didn't stand out at all, which was undoubtedly completely intentional.

Silva stepped up to the door and knocked quietly. If there had been some kind of secret signal or something similar, there had been no indication. The wooden door roughly dragged on the frame when it opened, either not fitted properly or salvaged from somewhere else. A plain looking beastfolk man with canine ears opened the door, looked over our group, and pulled the stubborn door the rest of the way open. Without a word, Silva and our group filed into the building and the door was roughly shut behind us. The moment the door closed I felt numerous different enchantments on the building snap into place and all of the outside sounds of the city muted. Like always, stepping into someone else's [Zone of Silence] made the hairs on the back of my neck step up and I could tell there were several other enchantments I couldn't as easily identify layered on top of this building as well.

There was a group of beastfolk playing a card game at the table on the first floor, but they paid us no mind as Silva led our group up the stairs. The top floor of the second-story building was only a hallway with two doors and she led us over to the one on the far side. The entire top floor had been cleared out and the first door had been chained shut, leaving only one large room with two people waiting for us at a round table. One was a human man, who I could instantly tell greatly out-leveled our group by a significant margin, and a beastfolk woman wearing black and grey armor that seemed a bit weaker than the average of our group. The woman didn't have any parts of her body uncovered, not even her tail, and wore a stylized metal mask of a snarling dog that stood out as enchanted to my mana sense. The only reason I could tell it was a woman at all was based on her body type. Despite her armor and cloak, it was easy to tell that she had wide hips and a slender frame, not that it meant much when stats and magic were in play. She had two swords on her belt, both on her left side, as well as a larger sword on her back.

The human man wore plain brown slacks and a tucked-in white shirt, his matching brown coat hung from the back of his chair, giving him the impression of a merchant. He had short black hair and a clean-shaven face making him look impressively... normal. Despite the prickle of danger I felt from being so out-leveled, his relaxed manner, curious eyes, and charming grin made him disarming.

He stood up once we all entered the room and gave a short bow. "It's a pleasure to finally meet all of you, as I'm sure you're aware, my name is Sophin Talrassi." He motioned to the woman. "This is a recent recruit of mine that I've decided to take under my wing, you can call her Lyric." She gave a silent bow. I couldn't see her eyes through the mask but I got the impression that the woman was staring at me. She kind of gave me the creeps.

Silva began pointing each of us out, "Belladonna, Mimi, Torien, Morrigan, and of course, Lilith Baphomet."

Sophin smiled at us and turned to focus on Lorriene. "It seems you've finally gotten your wish, reunited with your nieces, and with the death of the king, the freedom of the pantharians. At least the ones that didn't get snapped right back up anyway."

Lorriene smiled and turned to look over the twins. "Yes. Things have changed a lot in the last few days. I hope to spend more time with them soon, but none of us have had much opportunity to relax yet."

He gave a small nod of acknowledgment before gesturing at the large table. "Please, let's all sit. We have a lot to discuss." He sat down and looked at Lyric who nodded to him. Her nod made him grin, clearly some kind of unspoken communication was going on between the two.

Once everyone was seated he focused his attention on me. "I have it from a few reliable sources now that you're the Lilith that everyone has been searching for, including us, The Order of Lilith. Though I admit, hearing testimony from both Lorriene and Silva that you're the real thing is almost so unexpected that I would doubt it if I didn't have my own sources."

I studied his face carefully and activated the charisma portion of [Being of Karma]. It was odd, the guy was pretty unreadable, yet it felt like he wasn't using a charisma skill at all. Either he didn't actually have one or his attribute was so high level that it was unrecognizable. Shaking off that question for now I decided to respond.

"So you have other sources that suggest I'm the Lilith of your prophecies?" I asked.

"As much as you've tried to stay under the radar, you make quite the impression on a few people here and there, believe it or not. I first heard of you when you were still in Traehall and the event was notable enough that I dropped what I was doing to come see if you were the right person all the way back then. I had just missed you leaving town but I went back and found the ruin I believe you woke up in and confirmed that it was Clifford Remitori who had summoned you. I think I may have made it to Goldenhearth while you were still there, but before I could seek you out I was redirected to Port Korland. Unfortunately, I only arrived just before the Amphores cult attacked the Count."

"Wait," I said interrupting, "You know for sure that Amphores is the one who killed Count Korland?"

He nodded. "I do. Count Korland wasn't high up on our list of targets but he was still nominally pro-slavery. Some of our agents were monitoring his operations and caught wind of Amphores' movements. I was headed that way to personally intervene, but I arrived there too late to stop them from assassinating him or his wife. I was able to confirm their involvement because I ended up fighting some of them directly. No one present there had been high enough up to be important though, so we didn't learn much else."

"Why were you trying to intervene if he was pro-slavery?" Bella asked.

He turned to Bella and smiled kindly at her. "While the Order of Lilith does its share of dirty work, our organization are pragmatists first and foremost. Count Korland was pro-slavery on paper but he had a fairly amiable relationship with the late Baron Morrister. Even though Count Korland owned slaves himself, he only owned crime slaves. The Order doesn't like the practice of crime slavery either, it is very often misused to entrap people, but it is a lesser evil and we would much rather have someone we feel like we could push in the right direction in control of the port territory. We were targeting him for influence rather than assassination at this point. Him dying so shortly after Baron Morrister is a huge blow to our efforts in doing this the bloodless way. We believed we could have used Morrister's death to push Korland to the late Baron's cause."

"The bloodless way," Torien repeated. "And that means the bloody way is the only way left?"

"The hope is not entirely gone of course, the Elves still support our efforts in their own way, but the death of those two in particular means that the remaining nobles that we think could have been pushed will be much less likely to stick their necks out than before. Even putting up resistance to pro-slavery edicts and laws will be much less likely from them now."

I rubbed my eyes. "Now that the king is dead, the elves said they wanted to push for Marquis Saffadder to become the new king, but that would require removing the Duke of Torquin. Is that a path to removing slavery without further bloodshed?"

Sophin nodded. "That's our current posture, we already have an assassin working on targeting the Duke of Torquin as we speak. At this stage, installing Marquis Saffadder is the only path that doesn't end in the entire collapse of this kingdom through civil war, or a theocracy instigated by the Tamin church. Things are already moving in that direction. The guards of Torlimal city are allying themselves with them, even more closely than before."

I nodded. "I heard that from Talis, the head guard for the library of Sorsette."

"Sorry for the sudden change of topic, but what is your relationship with Sorsette? I can't help but be curious," Sophin asked.

"Currently, I'm a follower of Sorsette and was even offered a priest class from her. In the grander scheme, you can call us allies. I feel as though our values line up fairly closely."

Sophin's smile widened. "This could be quite the boon for us. If the Order can get some direct support from the Libraries of Sorsette, it could make our goals that much easier."

I frowned. "Us?"

Lorriene cleared her throat. "Before we talk about any of that, we should keep discussing the cult of Amphores. Do you know their motives Sophin?"

He turned to her with a confused look. "Did I not already say?"

The rest of us looked at each other in confusion and even the, until then, stoic looking Lyric looked like she suppressed a laugh.

Sophin signed and shook his head. "The cult of Amphores is pushing this country into a civil war. They have been systematically destroying all of our plans to get rid of slavery in this country the slow but less bloody way while also provoking slaves into rioting like they did earlier this week. I think that is why they targeted Baron Morrister. There are a lot of slaves privileged enough to know about him who had their hopes die with his passing. Across this country, many slaves held out hope that he would somehow alter the balance of power in this kingdom and free slaves from their bonds. Now that he's dead, a lot of the slaves that would have adopted a wait-and-see approach are more likely to violently rebel if an opportunity arises."

"But what about the collars?" Morrigan asked.

He smiled at her but I sensed a sliver of pity in his voice. "Most collars are not as insidious as the ones you three recently wore. Normal slave collars and crime slave collars have their limitations, as Silva likely proved with her recent stunt."

I nodded. "She used magic to pull it off somehow. I didn't think something like that was possible."

"Most collars are simply enchanted tools. Some magic, lightning magic especially, interferes with them. But even without the ability to completely remove the collars, slaves have found ways to manipulate their orders and selectively apply commands in ways that fly in the face of their intent. If there were a full-on rebellion, many slaves would be able to twist their masters' words enough to kill them and get away from the immediate area in the chaos. It would be hard for them to live anywhere respectable while wearing one, but it's not unheard of for bandits to be wearing uncontrolled slave collars. And then, of course, there's the cult of Amphores with their recently developed collar disruption tools and the elves with their ways to remove the collars entirely. The collars don't make it impossible to escape, only more difficult."

I turned to Silva and Lorriene. "How much have you told him about Winethorn's plan?"

"Nothing," Silva said simply.

Turning back to Sophin, I looked him in the eye. "Sometime in the next few days, the cult of Amphores and the elves are going to attack the slaver's guild simultaneously, and Feylaria Winethorn asked our group to help free some of the slaves and steal as much of Amphores' thunder as we can."

"I'm not aware of the idiom, but I think I get the idea... Tell me more about this plan, I'm sure I'll be able to help."