The Meeting (2/3)

After explaining it all, most of his companions show signs of exasperation. "Ugh...," Jay groans while suppressing a throwing up sound, "So you're going to stop our journey and chat away every time we have a battle? We'll never make it to the meeting if that happens."

"... That's what you're asking about?" Haalfrin laughs.

"Yeah! What if we're in a hurry? We can't have you pulling out the cooking gear as if nothing's wrong at the most inconvenient times!"

Haalfrin nods understandingly. "Ah. Well, if I'm in a hurry, she'll understand. She's not a very demanding person." He lifts up the tray with the last scone as a peace offering to Jay. "Want it?"

"…Sure. It looks good." Jay grabs it, stuffs it in his mouth. After he finishes it, he says, "Let's get a move on! We got to reach the mountains by dark, so we can hitch a ride with the caravan heading West."

As they pick up their dropped gear and finish burying the fallen Hawk assassins, Resburn inches over to Haalfrin and asks, "So, what's the death goddess like? Does she really devour the souls of fallen soldiers?"

Haalfrin sighs. "Why does everybody think that? NO. She and the other 4 Death gods just pick up souls and carry them to the Death World."

"How does one gain an affinity with death?" Resburn asks longingly. "It sounds pretty cool." Resburn really does have good reason to want an affinity with Death. Since he's a Spirit mage, it could help him a lot.

"Hm...," Haalfrin offers, "I'm not sure about a reliable way to do it... but it happened for me when I nearly died, back before I ever had magic. Well, scratch that, I DID die. I felt my soul leave my body and fall into the Spirit Realm. I won't bore you with the details; one of the death gods nearby thought I was still alive and yanked my soul out of the spirit realm and put me back in my body… by mistake, of course."

Haalfrin jerks his thumb over his shoulder in the direction they came. "Fisco got his Death Affinity much the same way."

"... What was it like to die?"

"Well, it's like this. After floating down deeper into the spirit realm, you'll actually find a phoenix god called ********."

"…" Resburn's face twitches, and he blinks a lot. "What? I didn't catch that."

"********!" Haalfrin tries saying again… except when he talks, the minds of everyone listening seem to shut down for a moment – just long enough to not hear Felkawyn's Name.

Everybody there shakes their heads. What was he saying?

It's like the moment he uttered that Name, their ears just stopped working for a split second. Even his mouth was blurry, so they couldn't read his lips.

Haalfrin just looks around, confused by everyone's strange expression. He finishes what he was saying more slowly, "So, you gain an affinity with death the same way you gain one for anything else. You've heard of people gaining an affinity with an element or a place, right? You just Comprehend the Name of the place. You get a Fire affinity by learning the Name of fire. You gain a Death affinity by learning the Name of death."

Despite saying some very helpful things, everybody feels solemn inside, and they don't ask any more questions.

---------------------

A ball of energy streaks across space. It travels on and on until it shoots into the Death Realm and is absorbed by Freyya as she sits in her house. She breathes in deeply and takes in the memories of her little avatar that just returned from visiting Haalfrin.

She immediately puts down her book and lays down on her pile of blankets and stares at the ceiling. "Hm… it feels like Haalfrin has changed again. I can feel it."

She turns over moodily and thinks some more, "I remember not long ago that he was a gloomy, angry, and violent person. He only thought about killing and getting in battle. Then, he got all mopey and didn't want to do anything with his life."

Feeling frustration in her heart, she rolls over and sets the book on a stand. "Now? I think he's different because of that Fisco boy and the other Threshold people. I don't know the man well, but his effect on Haalfrin is obvious. Haalfrin seems more cheery now, as well as more confident."

She recalls Haalfrin's calm attitude while she watched Haalfrin kill the Hawk assassins from up above. She saw him do things a little differently; it felt like he was acting more professionally.

She's never actually seen him act like that, and it was startling.

Freyya curls up a little more, and she has a dreadful feeling in her heart. "I'm a gloomy and violent person. Is he going to change so much that he doesn't want to Contract with me anymore? I mean, it feels like he's becoming less and less like me…"

Looking up, she recalls how he seemed to be getting along splendidly with his fellow soldiers. He helped them around camp, he wasn't immediately dismissive of them, and he ACTUALLY remembered their names.

The Crow goddess takes in a sharp breath and shoots to her feet. She lunges over to her dresser and pulls out her journal.

Hastily, she writes down, "If Haalfrin finds a stronger and stronger place among these people, his attachment to the living world will grow stronger… Hm… his fate with Das might grow stronger at this rate."

She shakes her head and writes, "No! If he really likes these soldiers, then me putting him in situations to get killed would put his other friends in danger. Getting Haalfrin killed is one thing, but putting his friends in danger too isn't very nice; he'd probably hate me if I did that. Arg. I just hope the thing with Fheldin works out… though I have a feeling that'll at least be postponed until after the Calamity in 100 years.

---------------------

After that little escapade with the Hawks attacking and Freyya's visit is over, everything is sunshine and daisies from there up until they get to the meeting.

Upon arriving at their destination, the 5 humans all see a giant pit dug deep into the earth. On the ground are long streams of caravans making the long trip down the spiraling ramp dug into the side of the sheer cliff.

Jay and his troupe join up with a caravan full of Fox people, as well as a single lonely Tortoise. The old Tortoise is so large that he hired the Foxes to carry him in a cart. He is so big that the cart is about 10 feet wide.

Myra knows both the Fox's and the Tortoise's language, so she is busy chatting away with the Rehkin about something Haalfrin is clueless about. Being left out of the conversation, he chooses to ignore them.

Haalfrin looks ahead and sees that the front carriage of their entourage is the fanciest of the lot and that it's being loaded up with open boxes full of… "Children's toys?" Haalfrin exclaims.

Myra pauses her conversation and says to Haalfrin, "That's actually what I was talking about with my new Fox friends. They said that Lord Fheldin – the chief dragon – recently had twin children. Everyone knows that Fheldin dotes terribly on all his kids, so when all the clans came with gifts, nobody bothered bringing presents for Lord Fheldin himself – they brought it for his children; they're more effective in currying favor."

"Ah…"

With nothing else to be curious about, he kicks his feet up on the edge of the cart, leans against the sleeping Tortoise, and nods off to sleep.

---------------------

Haalfrin awakens with a jolt when Faylin shakes him awake and notifies him that they're almost there. He looks out the carriage door and sees that the ground around them and the Mistress's garden is in shadow. Looking up, he sees that they are at the bottom of the pit already, and that the sun is getting ready to set.

Faylin looks at Haalfrin and remarks, "I don't know how you could sleep through that. The path down the ravine was really narrow, and the carriage barely fit. One misstep, and we'd have tumbled down." She shudders. "Never again."

"Meh," Haalfrin waves her off, "We're mages. We could just use levitation spells on the way down if we fell."

"That's still a terrible way to wake up."

Oh. Haalfrin remembers right then that levitation and flight magic don't actually work in Fheldin's front yard. For the sake of Faylin's mental health, he chooses not to mention it.

With that, everybody gets out of the cart they were riding in, and they walk off to the side where a rather large, but foreign-looking palace is. Even seeing this place for the second time, Fheldin's palace feels otherworldly.

Haalfrin looks at the front gate, and he notices a pair of statues on either side that he doesn't recognize. (Fheldin's wife reorganizes stuff around the palace all the time.) The statues are very intricate, and they depict creatures Haalfrin had never seen before.

At the front of the palace is a giant dragon skull with 5 horns on it. Just the eye socket alone is larger than Hraldin was. The skull is resting with its mouth open, and it's serving as the entrance to the palace.

Haalfrin scrunches his eyes up even more. 'I don't remember this being here,' he thinks with a frown.

Dakka answers, 'Oh, Grandfather must have moved the skull from his treasury in order to give a nice first impression to the visitors!'

'He trying to scare them to death?' Haalfrin thinks back.

'Why would that scare people?' Dakka asks with genuine confusion. 'Isn't having the skull of a 5-horned dragon a testament to how cool Grandpa is?'

Resburn on the side wrinkles his nose and asks, "That skull's not real, is it?" He'd seen dragons before, but never anything like this monstrosity.

This thing could literally swallow the Threshold in one bite; that's uncomfortable for anyone here to think about.

Dakka answers inside Haalfrin's mind, 'Oh, it's real. That's my granduncle right there. My Gramps and he were rivals for grandma's love, so they fought each other. The loser's skull was taken as a trophy. Grandma doesn't like how Grandpa keeps that thing around, so he doesn't usually display it.'

Haalfrin then turns to Resburn and reminds him, "You DO know that the owner of this land is a 5-horned dragon, right?"

Jay gulps nervously. "Uh, no. We just knew it was a high-ranking dragon who offered to let the Clans use his front yard as neutral territory… It's probably because this clan meeting includes dragon business."

Indeed, humans always had a limited understanding of this world. Most people have very little chance to travel or share their experiences with others.