Book 2: Chapter 24: Gala Politics

  They made their way down the hallway toward the ballroom together, as a single unit. As they walked, Alex couldn’t help but notice this area of the Palace was a little bit more lavish then the rest. The magic taken up a notch in the decoration’s department.

  Not just polished and pretty, alive. Lights were embedded in the vaulted ceiling, their illumination pulsed eerily in sync with the team's footfalls as they walked. Subtle color-shifts bloomed outward over the walls in reaction with each emotional ripple that they gave off, like a they walked through the inside of a mood ring. Garret’s nervous laugh sent a blush of amber crawling up the walls on one side. Zach’s low, humming silence painted them deep blue on the other.

  Devon kept glancing at his sleeves. “They’re monitoring our pulse,” he murmured, brushing his fingers down the velvet-lined cuff of his coat. “Probably enchantments in the thread. Maybe the seams. I swear that if this starts glowing out of nowhere, I’m going to set it on fire.”

  “You’ll look great doing it,” Allie reassured him as she adjusted his collar, ensuring it sat straight. “Try to wait until after appetizers, though.”

  Devon smiled happily at her compliment, but the smile quickly faded. His face turned into an anxious grimace as he scratched at a section of embroidery, acting as if he had never noticed it before. Allie simply slapped his hand away, forcing him to stop.

  They walked in two columns, flanked by palace staff whose faces never cracked, every one of them unnervingly symmetrical, softly smiling, and moved with such precision that Alex felt like they were walking through a stage play. Like every servant was an enchanted puppet programmed knowing only how to bow, how to turn, how to act visible just long enough to leave an impression. It was an eerie visual.

  Even the guards weren’t holding weapons. Not outwordly, anyway. No blades, no bows, only perfectly fitted dress armor and the kind of posture that said “we don’t need to draw weapons, you’ve already lost if we do.”

  Alex scanned the gilded walls. Illusion-cast paintings shifted subtly as they passed, each brushstroke bending like memory caught in motion. One showed what he guessed was the founding of Terraxum; a crowned mage standing atop a leyline-engraved cliff. Another flickered between images of the capital city in different time periods, sunlit one second, storm-wrapped the next. Watching eyes in painted windows followed them. Every painting alive with quiet scrutiny.

  The corridor narrowed slightly, and ahead, twin doors loomed up at them. The doors were each a carved midnight black wood, their surfaces veined with silver rune-filaments, and hummed softly. A pair of Arcanuum attendants in storm-grey armor and white cloaks stepped forward without a word. They placed their hands on the seal and runes unfurled like scrolls made of light, then the doors opened, and the world changed.

  The ballroom of Terraxum Palace was less a room and more a wild dream made of architecture. A glass dome arched high above, refracting the starlight from the city’s floating ring. Suspended chandeliers danced and turned slowly in the air. To Alex, thy gave impression of a galactic constellation, with floating gems and light-crystals orbiting around invisible cores. The floor was a polished mirror that reflected the ceiling’s cosmic display, making every guest seem as if they danced on the vast universe itself.

  And there were so many guests.

  Hundreds of people, maybe more, filtered in tiers inside the room. There were elegant nobles leaned across marble-railed balconies, their faces half-lit by drifting globes of aether-light. There were merchant-kings and church-cardinals whom whispered in dark corners and by buffet tables alike. Sect warriors in ceremonial armor prowled the perimeter, watching.

  On the highest tiers, the furthest balconies among the stars, bore the crests of Terraxum’s Twelve: Houses, Sects, Guilds, and the Crown itself, each with its throne-like seat. Each empty, waiting.

  The whole thing was a spiderweb, a mixture of decadent extravagance and danger. All laced up with glass, power, and political performance.

  Alex felt it in his ribs. That sensation he’d started to recognize long ago that meant someone was watching him, evaluating. He raised his chin, letting his mind slip into the familiar mask of Alexander Pierce, brother to Adam Pierce, charity dinner goer, award recipient, shoulder rubber. This was a battle field that he understood as well.

  They were being weighed, Alex would rig the scales.

  Kate’s gaze swept the balconies. “No weapons allowed,” she said, too softly for anyone else. “But everyone here has claws.”

  Henry nodded once. Zach didn’t speak, he only narrowed his eyes.

  Garret elbowed Devon and whispered, “So… bet you ten gold there’s at least three assassination plots brewing in this room right now.”

  “Four,” Devon muttered. “Minimum.”

  Their footsteps rang out as they descended the steps toward the central dance circle. No music played just yet, it was far too early for that. They descended under the sound of shoes on marble, the hush of voices trailing them like smoke, and the endless shimmer of light and reflection all around.

  It was a gala of knights and knives. And they had just walked straight into the center of it.

  The announcer stood poised at the base of the room’s grand staircase. He was dressed in black and blue robes that shimmered, his voice amplified by a resonance glyph hovering just beneath his throat. His words cut across the murmur of the ballroom, tone etched with importance.

  “Alexander Pierce, Commander of the WorldStrider Detachment, and his guests.”

  The reactions were instant. Some guests clapped, the stiff, measured kind of applause reserved for diplomatic necessity. Others whispered behind crystal fans or into spellwoven comm-links. A few nobles didn’t even bother to hide their distaste: one woman from a noble house narrowed her eyes into polished glass slits, her fingers tensing on the edge of her goblet. A robed church monks made the sign of a silent ward in front of themselves as if giving a prayer of protection.

  Alex reached the bottom step, his shoes falling against mirror-smooth flooring that reflected constellations above them, and the hungry eyes around them.

  He and Kate caught each other’s glance, a flicker of mutual understanding. What there were receiving now wasn’t admiration, or welcome.

  They were prey in dressed up silk and finery, displayed under star twinkled spotlights.

  “Alex Pierce,” a voice said, smooth as oiled parchment and just as hard to hold. Prince Kailan stood waiting beneath the eastern chandelier, dressed in tailored court regalia that shimmered with gold-etched thread. Not ostentatious, Kailan didn’t need flash. Power radiated from him the way heat did from a master blacksmith’s forge. His smile was elegant and exact, his eyes two degrees too cold and too clever to trust completely.

  He extended his hand and Alex shook it, warily.

  “Welcome to the heart of the kingdom,” Kailan said, his tone was soft and cordial. Loud enough for everyone nearby by to hear they were talking, but quiet enough that none of them would be able to hear the words. “We’re honored by your presence.”

  His volume dipped just slightly on ‘honored’, letting it mean a dozen things he didn’t say outright.

  “We hope the accommodations meet your expectations. Though I imagine… expectations are hard to calibrate, when your last home was shattered between worlds?”

  Alex didn’t flinch, at the attempt to fish information from him. He knew the prince was looking for reactions, and he gave him nothing. “We’re adjusting.”

  Kailan’s gaze flicked across the rest of the team. “Mmm. Adjustment. A virtue, and a weapon both.”

  Kate stepped forward smoothly. “We appreciate the invitation, Your Highness.”

  “I doubt that,” Kailan said, smile unwavering. “But I admire the civility.”

  He clasped his hands behind his back and spoke low enough to be intimate but not secret. “I suggest you dance tonight. Not just with partners. With eyes open and much care. Politics, after all, is a rhythm. One either moves to it, or is trampled by those who do.”

  He glanced toward the far balcony above them, where the Council stood now, mingling among themselves, veiled in layers of charm-screens and social distance. Some of that distance for safety, no doubt.

  “Let’s hope your minds,” the prince added added, eyes back on Alex, “are as sharp as your weapons.”

  “I don’t use any weapons,” he replied, a grin tugging at the side of his mouth.

  “Oh my, must be blunt then,” the prince chuckled.

  Then he turned, nodding once in dismissal, and vanished into the swirling crowd like a magician into smoke.

  Alex exhaled. Garret muttered something about snakes in silk from over his shoulder. Devon had already begun scanning the balcony’s enchantments, frowning.

  “Well,” Allie said softly, adjusting her earrings, “I think we’ve just been invited to a war preparation party. Wine?”

  Somewhere between the announcement and the first and second rounds of crystal wineglasses, the tension had softened a hair. The music began, lifting the energy in the room into brighter tempos. Conversations unfurled about, voices echoing softly up and down the balconies. In this room, power moved not in bloody blades or house hosery, but in small gestures. It was a glance of the eyes, a whisper, or the way a noble’s glass was refilled just a moment faster than someone else’s.

  The team didn’t need to be told to scatter. They moved like a unit splitting formation, proffessional and practiced.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Alex caught the movement before it reached him. A man in twilight robes with silver threading. Highlord Orien Velcryn walked like a historian moved through a museum, like he already knew everything going on inside. He approached alone, which made it Alex feel worse.

  “Commander Pierce,” Orien said smoothly, like polished and gleaming metal. Alex hated that title, he didn’t think himself any sort of leader, let alone a commander. “We’ve been very curious about you.”

  Alex gave a respectful nod, stepping aside with him near the mirrored edge of the ballroom. “Can’t imagine why.”

  “Oh, modesty. How quaint.”

  Velcryn’s gaze flicked across the room, tracking the movements of councilors and sect envoys. His attention returned to Alex like a blade sheathing in a velvet scabbard.

  “I read your little notebook you know. Your preliminary notes on spell-pattern stabilization through resonance mirroring, very curious thinking. That technique you sketched, the tri-weave lattice around a modified aether gate… That wasn’t learned here in Terraxum.”

  Alex hesitated. So the items that were taken from them got trifled with after all. It appeared this particular noble got his hands on the notes he had been making while looking through the scroll Sylvaris had left him. It was mostly random musings and thoughts, ideas for minor improvements on things. Or him working through a section of the scroll he didn’t quiet understand.

  “I had some help. From an Elven scholar. Sylvaris.”

  Orien’s expression didn’t change, but something behind his eyes clicked into place. “We found similar frameworks once. In a ruin, deep in the western Scar. The structure was barely intact, charred stone, fractured glyphs. But the energy signature was… ancient. Strange and peculiar, but right in its own sort of way.”

  He leaned slightly closer. “It didn’t look like just aether and power. It was a kind of spellcraft logic. Intent manipulation. As though someone outside the of this world had rewritten the rules of magic into ways they understood them.”

  Alex kept his face still, his thoughts less so. “Are you saying Terraxum’s seen Worldstrider’s before?”

  Velcryn smiled faintly. “I’m saying Terraxum collects what survives. And occasionally, what it doesn’t.”

  He let the silence settle, letting the weight of that truth hang. Then he offered Alex the bait, “I can try to look into more, dig up some information, so to speak.”

  “In exchange,” Orien said, “we’d like a gesture. A cultural exchange, let’s call it. One spell. One schematic. Something small, something insightful. No secrets or anything. Just... context.”

  Alex didn’t agree right away. That would be pure foolishness. “I’ll consider it,” he said carefully.

  Orien’s smile sharpened just slightly. “I’m sure you will.”

  ***

  Across the ballroom, Kate moved like a knife sheathed on one’s hip, visible, but restrained.

  She was already being watched by a few dozen eyes when Lady Thessalia Caerwyn glided over, a feathered fan curled in one hand, eyes unreadable behind lashes too perfectly still to be natural.

  “Kate Locke,” Thessalia said, her tone was rich and full, the sound glinting like a glass in water on a summer day. “Duelist, tactician, face of the oncoming foreign storm. I’m told you made quite the impression at the sparring pits with Captain Drenn’s regiment.”

  Kate dipped her head, precise and unflinching. “They fought well.”

  “They bleed better.” Thessalia smiled. “Come. Walk with me.”

  They moved along the far edge of the third floor balcony, the view below a pool of color and slow-dancing politics. Thessalia didn’t speak for several steps, and Kate didn’t rush to fill the silence.

  “You carry yourself like a weapon that knows when not to strike,” Thessalia said finally. “That’s rarer than you might think.”

  Kate side-eyed her. “Or I’m just tired.”

  “Even better,” she chirped.

  They stopped at a table by a half-curtained alcove. A server passed, and Thessalia took a drink, placing it gently on a napkin and spinning the stem just slightly as she set it down.

  “You’re not just muscle,” the noblewoman continued. “You understand formation. Power. Pressure points… political and physical.”

  “I understand surviving, even when everyone else is trying to make sure you don’t.”

  Thessalia’s smile never faltered, but the sharpness in her yes increased. For a heartbeat, her fan dipped lower than custom allowed. “Should Terraxum choose to remember its better instincts… we may have need of leaders who remember war honestly.”

  She left without another word, but not before tapping her fingers once on the napkin, folded now, and marked with an embossed seal barely visible in the dim light.

  Kate picked it up. It smelled faintly of aether-wine and fresh-ink.

  She slipped it into her dress, eyes narrowing.

  Across the ballroom and a balcony up, Alex caught Kate’s eye just as she tucked the napkin away.

  ***

  Devon was trying not to sweat through a thousand-gold jacket, tugging at the collar that Allie had fixed at least half a dozen times already.

  He had cornered a tray of tiny cakes and was pretending to study them when the click of crystal heels stopped just behind him. Too light to be armored, too purposeful to be accidental.

  “Enjoying the refreshments?”

  He turned, already halfway regretting it.

  Vess Auralde’s figure was all dress and curves. She embodied luxury as she stood draped in rose-gold silks lined with subtle purple embroidery. Her eyes sparkled with predatory interest, her lips painted in a soft metallic sheen that caught the light of the room just so. She gracefully danced the stem of a filled wineglass between her fingers like a spell waiting to misfire.

  Devon cleared his throat. “Uh… sure.”

  “Vess Auralde,” she said, extending a hand like it was a gift. “Chair of the Merchant Consortium's Inner Table. Director of Arcano-Tech Advancement. Enthusiast of foreign… innovation.”

  He shook her hand carefully, feeling the aether heat buzz just under her skin.

  “Devon Andrews, yes?” she said smoothly.

  Devon nodded awkwardly. “Uh. Yeah.”

  She tilted her head. “You’re with the Striders. One of the travelers.”

  He didn’t answer that, exactly. Just smiled without committing to anything. Like not answering would trick her into doubting herself, despite the fact they both very well knew the truth.

  Vess stepped closer, picking up two drinks from a passing tray. She handed him one, not quite asking, and kept the other. The aether glimmered faintly in the liquid, giving the liquid an extra kick for the enhanced stats of the guests.

  “Do forgive me,” she said lightly. “I imagine everyone here wants to corner you and ask what world you’re from, how you survived the dungeon, and whether or not your bones glow in the dark.”

  Devon blinked. “They… don’t.”

  “Pity,” she said. “It would be good for business.” She sipped her drink, then let silence stretch just long enough to pressure him.

  “So,” she said, feigning casualness, “I assume your world has wonders we wouldn’t dream of? Spell-forms beyond our design? Technological artifacts?”

  “I mean…” Devon hesitated. “Some things. Not all good.”

  “Oh, nothing ever is,” she replied breezily. “But imagine the cultural value. The trade possibilities. If someone like you had knowledge of, say, portable spell-conversion systems. Or structured glyph logic. Or… conductive stone arrays.”

  He narrowed his eyes slightly. “That’s awfully specific for someone just making conversation.”

  Vess only smiled in response. “I like to be prepared. In my world, information is the only true currency.”

  Devon sipped his drink. The aether buzz in it was dull, trace amounts, just enough to nudge one’s inhibitions. “I’m not really the guy you’d want for trade deals,” he said. “I’m more of a fix-it-when-it-breaks type.”

  “Oh, but those are exactly the people I like,” she purred. “Tinkerers. Builders. The ones who know how things work, and how they could work better.”

  She studied him, eyes fluttering, giving him the feeling he should reciprocate in some way. There was no magic or spell involved, just a merchant’s pressure, polite, pretty, and persistent, like a car salesman.

  “If ever you discover something worth sharing,” Vess continued, stepping closer just a hair, “the Merchant Consortium is always eager to invest. We reward insight. And loyalty.”

  Devon gave her a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  She raised her glass in a silent toast. “Ideas belong to the minds brave enough to claim them.” Then she turned and glided off into the crowd, a velvet-wrapped riddle with a ledger for a soul.

  Devon exhaled. He hadn’t said anything useful. But somehow, he still felt like he’d given something away.

  ***

  Mother Theralyn looked nothing like a political figure, because mostly, she wasn’t one. Dressed in soft ocean-blue robes, she stood with the exacting poise of a proud and demanding matron in midst of her own house. Despite this, she had warm eyes, a sparkling blue color that complimented her silvered hair. And yet, as she approached Allie and Holly near the ballroom’s outer arch, the crowd seemed to part for her.

  “Allison Hill,” she said, her words already drifting out like a gentle sermon. “You saved lives for this city. I’ve read the reports. You healed three soldiers undergoing sudden traveler’s exhaustion. No healer under Terraxum’s sun would call that anything less than miraculous.”

  Allie blinked, caught off guard by the praise. “I just did what needed doing.” She finally said, knowing damn well that those soldiers were just hit with heat stroke. But then again, it didn’t seem that this place understood basic things like that. They had magical healing pearls and potions, but a fever was a conundrum.

  Theralyn touched her hand, just briefly. “You did what was right. That is what the Lady of Light expects of us.”

  But even as she smiled, her eyes flicked, quick and assessing, toward Allie’s gloves. Toward her pulse, her heartbeat

  “You draw your healing magic differently,” she said. “Not quite through prayer. Not quite through the light on its own. More, willful. Is it channeled through something else?”

  Allie stiffened slightly. Holly stepped half a pace closer, posture tightening.

  “It’s instinctive,” Allie said. “I’m still learning it myself.”

  “I see.” Theralyn held her gaze a heartbeat longer, then softened again. “The Lady of Light shines through all lenses. Sometimes the newest ones are clearest.”

  A priest in white vestments stood rigid a few feet behind her, glaring at them with the kind of disgust usually reserved for heretics or demons. Holly’s eyes narrowed at him, just enough to make sure he saw.

  Theralyn didn’t look back, but her volume dropped half an octave.

  “Ignore Father Crassel. The Church speaks in many voices. Not all of them are exactly kind.” She offered a whispered blessing, more symbol than religious sacrament, and then turned and walked away with the grace of someone who was used to being underestimated.

  Allie exhaled slowly. Holly didn’t.

  “She’s on our side,” Holly murmured, “or thinks she should be.”

  Allie looked down at her hands. “Let’s hope that’s enough, because I don’t want her as an enemy.”

  ***

  Garret had just finished mocking the floral centerpieces. He said something about it looking like it belonged in a funeral-home for houseplants, when he felt Henry suddenly stiffen even further than normal beside him.

  Across the ballroom floor, a man in storm-gray robes trimmed with iron had turned to face them. He was tall, with a spine made of stone if his posture was any indicator. And with eyes like they’d been forged under pressure and then cooled too slowly.

  Master Halraen of the Azure Vault Sect.

  He didn’t approach them like a noble. His movements had no glide and no fanfare. Just steady steps across the polished marble, as if the rest of the court didn’t matter. Which, to him, it probably didn’t.

  He stopped a pace away from Henry and looked him over like he was looking at a blade on a rack.

  “Henry Imose,” he said. “Water element, [Piercing Spear] style, but wields a halberd. Defensive pivots into strong reactive crushing blows. You fought in the training pits, didn’t you?”

  Henry gave a quiet nod. “Once.”

  “I heard about it.” Halraen’s gaze shifted slightly. “Your commander too. The older one, Eric Thompson. Direct and adaptive-based aggression. No wasted movement.”

  Then, almost as an afterthought: “And the quiet one. Zach. He shows swift, efficient violence. I like that.”

  Garret raised an eyebrow. “You keep a notebook, or do you just memorize every fight description you hear about?”

  Halraen’s eyes flicked to him. “Martial clarity matters,” he said simply. “Not who wins. Not how loud, just how well. Most of the political court forgets that.”

  Henry stayed still. “And you don’t?”

  “No.” Halraen’s answer was clean. “We train to survive. Anything beyond that is vanity.”

  He let the silence hang a moment longer, studying Henry again, not the way nobles studied people, like they were investments or risk. Halraen looked like he was assessing structural integrity.

  “Water style’s rare outside support formations, or crowd control,” he said. “You use it like one uses fire, or earth, explosively.”

  Henry met his eyes. “Explosive power wins.”

  Halraen gave the faintest grunt of agreement. “You ever lose a match?”

  Henry nodded once. “A few.”

  “Good,” Halraen said. “Losing’s honest.”

  Garret leaned in slightly, smiling. It was a weird interaction for him to watch. Two short spoken men, stiff as iron rods, just looking at each other. “You ever laugh?”

  Halraen didn’t blink. “Once. Ten years ago.”

  That earned a bare smirk from Henry. Even Garret looked impressed by the quip.

  Master Halraen shifted his stance slightly, shoulders loosening, still not relaxed, but less coiled. “You won’t find many friends among the balcony crowd,” he said. “But if you keep fighting like that, the ones you do find might be worth trusting.” He turned without another word, but two steps away, he paused.

  “If your commander is wise,” he said over his shoulder, “he’ll keep you sharpened. The court dulls blades when it doesn’t fear them.” Then he was gone, swallowed back into the crowd like a ghost.

  Garret looked sideways at Henry. “He didn’t even offer you a duel.”

  Henry shrugged. “He wasn’t here to test me.”

  “No?”

  “No,” Henry said. “He was watching to see if we’re already being used.”