Chapter 5: Swanky

***Emperor Pikaku, Uniter of the Continent, Ruler of Mestikos, Level 328***

“Water stress among the brovis continues to ease as the reservoirs do their job, and we expect to see a return on investment within a few short years. The Inulak people continue to insist that the harbor a thousand miles northwest of them is polluting their waters, and demand a cessation of activity…

Pikaku took his job as seriously as possible. Maximum benefit for the most people, but gods, it was dry sometimes.

“What was that last one?”

“A valet assigned to one of your petitioners was disintegrated by an unidentified artifact. A seer has determined that the petitioner is blameless, but we’ve taken the liberty of cancelling the meeting.

“Who was it?”

“One Jebediah Trapper.”

“Oh, him!” Pikaku said, his neck shaking a bit in amusement as he recalled the man in question, easily a contender for the title of ‘most powerful human on Pharos’.

Suddenly an evil thought struck him, and his eyebrows raised in devious glee.

“You know what? Don’t cancel the meeting, I would like to see what this human needs our assistance with.”

“As you wish,” His assistant said, making a note on her paper.

“And he’s going to need a new valet, isn’t he?”

“Sire?”

“Is my nephew still being a brat?”

“I…um, have difficulty responding to that,” The assistant replied.

“Don’t worry, he is. My sister’s been talking my ear off about how little he takes after his father.” Pikaku clarified. “I think a little adversity would do that child good, and Jebediah Trapper seems to be some kind of walking adversity magnet.”

“Sire, the previous valet is ash now.”

“Doesn’t get much more adverse than that.”

***Piwaki, level 20 Mystic Cosmetic Healer***

“But…why a healer?” Piwaki’s keegan friend Kolusk asked, confusion evident on his face. “That’s kind of…boring, don’t you think?”

“Not to mention gross,” Jeresh chimed in as she walked beside him. “Your daily life becomes nothing but blood and puss.”

The three of them cut a strange figure as they walked through the Imperial Academy, a place where friendships were largely among the same species. Among all these teenagers filled to the brim with hormones, Piwaki, Kolusk and Jeresh were some of the most visually stunning specimens of their species…

But not to each other.

To each other, they looked awkward/skeletal/fat.

It started as a joke that the three most attractive students in the academy hung out to escape all the positive attention…then it sort of came true on its own.

“Think, my friends, think.” Piwaki tapped a claw to the side of his head. “Are healers not the most highly paid profession? A healer does spend their time around gross things, but only a handful of hours a day at most, and that’s a small price for the pay…”

Piwaki closed his beak so that he didn’t drool onto the ground, imagining all the cash and tailfeather that went with it.

“I’m perfectly comfortable with living the rest of my life perfectly comfortably.”

“Mystic Daredevil is better,” Kolusk said, flat out.

“You’re gonna wind up a smear on the marble somewhere,” Piwaki said with a shrug.

“Boys, boys,” Jeresh said, shaking her head. “Always thinking with your dicks. Obviously an inheritor class is better.”

“Oh sure, let me just whip up an ancestor to will me a portion of their Impact. Oh wait, I’m the fifth son of a minor house!” Piwaki said, his neck wobbling in scorn.

“Your mom’s the emperor’s sister.”

“But my DADis an adventurer,” Piwaki said, shuddering. His father’s feathers were always covered in dust. There was a brief flashback to his father’s ‘training regimen’ that he was fairly sure was just a hazing. No, thank you.

Why would she ever decide to marry a Myst-less Steelclaw Brawler? It wasn’t because of the man’s class or social status. And if his social graces were anything to go by, that couldn’t have been it either.

I can only assume my father is exceptional in the roost. Hopefully I inherited some of that.

“Frankly I think the emperor gave him a title just so he wouldn’t be a complete embarrassment to the family.”

For some reason, Piwaki’s older brothers seemed to enjoy the workout torture, sharpening their claws, lifting, running, until they looked like some kind of primordial feathered predator from the ancient past.

Bleh. No thank you.

Piwaki was the smartone, and he was going to prove it with his build.

Healer was a standard class available to anyone who makes the effort to learn a bit about anatomy and patch up a moderate to major wound before they turn level twenty.

Cosmetic Healer required even more specific knowledge of how to alter someone’s appearance surgically. It was an unheard of class until some humans with a profession known as ‘plastic surgeons’ were reported. This was mostly ignored as an interesting, but ulitimately useless Class, but Piwaki had seized on the idea and consulted a human who had practiced.

According to them, the practice had become quite lucrative, especially among the rich and famous.

To become a cosmetic healer, one must surgically alter someone’s appearance in a believable way before level twenty, and aid in their healing.

That was a horrible experience, but worth it.

To become a MysticCosmetic Healer simply required the User to use their Myst in some way to assist the process. Piwaki’s Myst allowed him to keep his experimental test subject stress-free throughout the surgery and healing process, which must have helped enough, because he got the class.

Now that the rest of his life had been paved in gold and tailfeathers, Piwaki really had nothing to do but lay back and enjoy the bounty the world had to offer him…

“Piwaki Apiyeki?” A voice called from the side. It sounded too solid, too forceful to be a student, and it halted the three of them in their tracks.

“…Yes?” He asked, turning to find himself staring up at a towering Melas wearing the Emperor’s colors.

“You’ve been randomly selected to replace an Imperial Valet.” The Melas said, holding out a letter with his uncle’s seal on it.

“What happened to previous one?” Piwaki asked, internally cursing the inconvenience as he took it out of the powerful man’s hand. It made no sense to refuse, despite the trouble it would put him through. You didn’t not accept a task from the emperor.

“Disintegrated in the line of duty.”

“Wha-“

“Best of luck.” The Melas vanished in a puff of foul smelling smoke.

Kolusk leaned down and whispered in his ear.

“Bet you wished you were a Mystic Daredevil right about now, don’t’cha?”

***Jeb***

Jeb stood in front of a massive wrought iron gate outside a compound that screamed money. The hedges had fantastical designs carved into them, and from the gate, he could see the edge of what looked like a brilliant blue swimming pool.

Picturing Vresh in a swimsuit got the blood pumping. There were a couple things about the six and a half-foot tall Amazonian Melas woman that were hard to ignore.

“How’s my hair?” Jeb asked, running his fingers through his hair one more time.

“Clumpy, and thinning.” Smartass said from his shoulder, her heels tapping against his collarbone.

Thanks for that, Jeb thought sourly as he reached out and pulled the chain beside the gate.

Dingggg….Dongggg…..

“You think it would be rude to give myself a trim on her front porch?” Jeb asked, feeling his scratchy stubble with his thumb.

“Yes.”

“Yeah, I thought so too,” Jeb sighed, lowering his hands.

He was so caught off balance by the faceless dead valet that he’d rushed right over without bothering to get cleaned up, and now he was regretting it.

At least he’d had the sense to leave Borg at home to guard the scroll. Jeb didn’t really care one way or another if Borg touched got himself annihilated, he just didn’t want the creature hovering while he talked to Vresh.

He took Smartass because the emotional powder keg simply couldn’t be trusted not to get herself killed or kidnapped if he left her on her own.

Priorities, I guess.

About fifteen seconds went by before Tom saw a butler-looking melas in white and gold come around the bend in the hedge that concealed a large portion of the main property.

“Greetings,” The melas said, his gaze flicking up to Smartass for an instant before resting on Tom’s face, hair, dusty jacket and weather-damaged, muddy prosthetic.

“May I ask the nature of your visit?” He asked.

“I got this letter inviting me to Fere Talis.” Jeb said before pausing. “Is it pronounced Feh-reh or Fere?”

“You’re Mr. Trapper?” The butler said in a tone that spoke volumes about betrayed expectations.

“Yes. Did you think I’d be taller?”

“Ah, no,” The butler hastily course corrected his tone and opened the gate with a slight bow. “Follow me.”

Jeb allowed himself to rubberneck as he gawked at the fixtures, from the beautiful moasiac in the freakin’ floor, all the way down to the gilded nude melas statues holding up spinning spheres of marble, kept moving by the fountains that welled up out of them and into the pool.

Ritzy.

It was a little…empty, though.

That always struck Jeb as counter intuitive. You got an amazing place to throw a pool party, why not? Like how the ultra-rich – back when they existed – had amazing homes they never set foot in. What was that all about?

Then again, you can’t constantly be throwing pool parties.

The butler was seemingly numb to it, his head fixed on straight as he guided Jeb along the edge of the pool and around to a side door in the mansion that rose mountainous above the forest of hedges.

Jeb entered through a humble servant’s entrance that was a lot more homey than he was expecting, with a dirty rug, coat rack and shoes by the door. He was guided out into the main lobby, which was far more spectacular. Light filtered from a stained glass mural above him reflecting off the matte floor in a way seemingly designed to diffuse the brilliant colors into the atmosphere and forcepeople into a happy mood.

He wasn’t given much time to gawk before he was guided up a flight of velvet stairs, finally coming to a halt in front of a pair of solid double doors that looked like a lot of pygmies died cutting down the huge tree it must’ve been carved from.

Swanky.

All this time, he’d been expecting Smartass to go apeshit, but when he glanced at the fairy riding on his shoulder, she was slackjawed, staring at everything in wide-eyed wonder. It occurred to Jeb that fairies in general can’t have nice things, and the child-ridden orphanage was the fanciest place she’d ever visited.

The butler knocked, a polite two raps.

“Enter,” Vresh’s voice called.

At this point, Jeb had been letting his imagination get carried away from him wondering what ‘entertain’ meant, but he didn’t fail to notice the tone of Vresh’s voice. It was stiff and tightly controlled with an edge to it, like she was…angry?

The double doors opened, and Jeb got his answer.

“Introducing one Jebediah Trapper, here to visit Ms. Tekalis.” The butler said, bowing and stepping aside.

The room was dominated by a massive ovoid table that seemed to be poured obsidian. Around it were about six Melas who had vague familial resemblance to each other. There was an obvious tension between them, in the way they held their stiff posture, their seating positions.

There was one younger melas sitting by Vresh’s side, and three older ones sitting around a goatee’d fellow who looked something like The Darkness from Legend.

Vresh and the other four had a gulf between them that was more than just distance. There was conflict at play here.

“Jeb? What are you doing here?” Vresh asked with a frown, and Jeb’s skin went cold as everyone turned to stare at him. The oldest Melas had the slightest crook on his lips as he appraised Jeb’s rather poor appearance.

The pieces came together.

Ah, damnit, I got catfished. They were trying to use him to embarrass her and weaken her social status among her family. Well, no choice but to play ball.

“I think I got catfished by a letter from your uncle,” Jeb nodded towards the older Melas as he entered the room, approaching Vresh’s side of the table and grabbing the seat to her right before plopping himself down beside her. He wanted his metaphorical position to be extremely clear.

“If so, he’s got suspiciously good taste in lipstick.”

“Oh my, the letter that brought you here wasn’t legitimate?” Smartass whispered, pinching his ear vindictively. “Where’s all that condescending attitude from before? Too proud to admit you were blinded by that hussy’s enormous –“

“That seat is reserved for Ms. Tekalis’s fiancé.” A rather slender Melas woman with greying hair said, giving Jeb the stink-eye.

First rule of confidence: always double down.

“Why, is he coming?” Jeb asked, craning his neck to glance around the well-appointed room. “I don’t see him. If he shows up, I’ll give it back.”

“Peace, Brinda, we have to assume the human hasn’t spent his life learning melas etiquette. Besides, Vresh doesn’t have a fiancé. That’s why we’re here after all. That little matter of succession. I’m sure a young woman like you shouldhave no trouble securing one. Perhaps they’ve seen too many of your public executions and have gone to ground. or is it perhaps a defect in character?”

The older melas in the center spoke, his body still as the grave as he stared at Vresh. All except his thumb, which traced the scrollwork on the edge of his goblet while he waited for Vresh’s response.

What’s the play here? Jeb thought, scanning the members of the dinner party while he tried to figure out what kind of shit he’d just stepped into.

Smartass was right: he’d been blinded by wishful thinking and boobs. Now he was in the deep end and didn’t know how to swim, looking for any sort of life-preserver he could get his hands on.

Jeb sank into his thoughts while Vresh gave a cold response to her uncle’s barb.

Okay, we have to assume that not everyone in this room is one hundred percent for or against Vresh. If that was the case, there would be no fancy dinner party. One side would simply have declared victory already. So who is the neutral-ish party here? Who are they trying to sway?

Jeb’s gaze landed on the Melas man sitting two spaces away from Vresh’s uncle, a portly fellow with a similar chin to Vresh, who was watching the proceedings with great interest between bites of carefully cubed steak-like substance.

There’s my bitch. That had to be the guy who was still on the fence, and if so, then the name of the game of this entire dinner party was to make a good impression on him.

“Mr. Trapper?”

“Eh?” Jeb grunted, glancing up at the butler who’d snuck up on him.

“Would you like anything?”

“A glass of water, a bowl of water, and whatever he’s having,” Jeb said, nodding to the neutral party. Jeb wasn’t sure if it was insulting to copy someone else’s choice, but if it was, he would feign ignorance. Otherwise, it showed that he deferred to the man’s choice, which usually made people happy.

And it did smell good.

“Right away,” the butler said with a bow before turning to leave.

“Oh, and some juice.” Jeb added before the man could get too far away, motioning to Smartass, who was inspecting the obsidian tableware with sparkling eyes.

“Of course.”

“So, Mr. Trapper, tell us about your companion. I’m sure we could all use a break from more serious topics.” Vresh’s uncle spoke.

Bit of a leading question there, Jeb thought, since fairies were technically illegal. And more serious? Did he just put me and mine in the ‘less serious’ box?

“Well, I met Smartass in the Impossible tutorial. Me and several other humans pried the secrets of Myst out of them by trade. Her village sold me the secrets of Myst for M&M’s. It’s a kind of human candy.”

“I suppose that’s the reason corpses have been found in the Death Wilds with a pocketful of candy.” The uncle murmured.

Smartass dropped the glassy fork she’d been studying at the mention of her village, her eyes wide as she gasped.

“They’re all dead!” She exclaimed, her eyes watering for an instant before she jumped off the table and ran away, bawling at full volume, leaving the entire table speechless.

Talk about a delayed reaction. Might’ve called Guiness if they still existed. Jeb thought, watching her go. He weighed his loyalty to Vresh against his debt to Smartass and sighed, rising from his chair.

“I’ll be right back. Nobody spit in my food.”

Jeb spent a minute tracking down Smartass to where she was hiding under an ornate cabinet, curled into a ball, her eye streaming with tears.

“You wanna talk about it?” Jeb asked, peering into the tiny dark space. “It’s gonna be painful growing new pieces of yourself that you never had before. I just want you to know that you’ve still got friends who’ll be there for you while you go through it.”

95% cribbed from other consolation speeches I’ve heard before, but no less true.

“Go away.” Her voice trembled from the darkness.

“You wanna go home?” He asked.

“No.”

“You wanna be alone?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, I’ll come check on you in a little while before we go, and you’re always welcome to join us again, or I can take you home.”

“’Kay.”

Jeb stood up and walked back to the table, where his food had arrived in his absence, notably in a different seat than he’d been in before.

Ah well,Jeb thought, sitting down and grabbing the bowl of water.

“Welcome back, Mr. Trapper. There seems to be some confusion as to whether you were in the Impossible tutorial at all, seeing as you were never featured with the other winners originally.” Her uncle said.

“He was.” Vresh said. “I was assigned to shove him and his friends back into the Tutorial when they escaped containment. We missed each other by minutes.”

“Oh, I didn’t know that,” Jeb said, glancing over at her as he grabbed his bowl of water and dumped it over his head, catching the water with a bowl of telekinetic Myst wrapped around his head. He then ran a comb-scissor of Myst through his hair, giving himself a more no-nonsense military cut, depositing the loose hair into the water sloshing around on top of his head. A moment later he repeated the process with his face, shaving with a razor made of pure Myst before depositing the water back in the bowl.

All told, Jeb’s magical whore bath took about fifteen seconds, and it seemed to impress the four nobles. Or disgust them. He wasn’t quite sure. There was a decent amount of staring involved. Did he have to use enough Myst to level the entire mansion to cut his hair?

No.

But it made an impression.

“I’m both relieved and disappointed I didn’t get to meet you earlier,” Jeb said with a chuckle, sliding the bowl of water away from himself.

“It probably wouldn’t have gone well for you,” Vresh said with a smile as she leaned closer, giving him a rather mesmerizing view of crimson decotellage.

“No,” Jeb said, nodding as he failed to tear his gaze away from the Melas woman beside him. “It probably wouldn’t have. Still a little disappointed, though.”

“Ahem.”

Jeb’s gaze snapped back to the melas across the table from them.

“Right. What were we talking about?”