Nebula's Premise

"Well, you did have six of those," István said, pointing toward the dessert tray. Why was I not surprised he counted?

"Hush, you," I said, blushing a little, "You know that's not what I mean."

My Elder gave a bit of a mischievous grin while acknowledging that he did, in fact, understand that I wasn't referring to body mass.

"Can you describe what you are feeling?" He asked.

"It's something different from the tug from before," I said. "It's like something tied a million tiny ropes to every part of my body. The pulling is in the same direction, though. Still down."

"Interesting!" Because of course it was. Even I was curious about what was going on, so of course Elder Scholar would be fascinated by it. We were on the third or fourth floor of the building, so my immediate thought was someone or something beneath us had done something, but Celistar shook her head when I suggested it.

"No, it's not anything I've encountered like that," she said. "Only you seem to be feeling it."

"So nothing you've done in the Stormwing Circle…" I said, only to hear something unexpected.

"Stormwind," she corrected. "It's the Stormwind Circle."

"Wait, what?" I was certain it was the Stormwing Circle. You know, like a bird? "Have I been mishearing it the entire time?"

"Evidently so," István said. "I have only heard 'Stormwind'."

"Steeve, is this a joke of yours?" I asked the fox, who popped into my arms when I said her name, but looked up at me with the biggest, most innocent of eyes. Not as though that alone meant anything, but considering what I knew about her, she'd definitely want the subject of her silliness to know who the Queen of Absurdity was.

Well, I've always known that D is for Lysdexia, so maybe I'd just done some creative misreading at some point and substituted that for what I'd heard. It wasn't as if they were that far apart, after all.

"Anyway," I said, "back to the subject at hand." Celistar gave me a little bit of a smirk at my obvious attempt at redirecting the conversation, but let it slide in the end.

"Indeed," said István, "We should focus tomorrow on determining if there are any specific areas in the city where either of these effects is stronger. That will give us more information."

"Yup, Celistar was right," I said.

"About what?" The lady in question asked.

"I believe your words were something along the lines of 'word will spread that someone like you has come'."

"Ah, right… Have you found them?"

"Yes, there are quite a few," I said. "I'm feeling at least three or four different ones."

"People?" asked Viktor.

"Groups," I replied, to which he grinned.

"Even better."

I closed my eyes and put my hand on István's arm with a little bit of a squeeze, relying on him to guide me while I focused on sussing out the nature of the people following us.

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They were like blips of light in a field of Nebula I had floating across the ground, the 'radar' I often used as a sensing tool. It was harder to do properly inside the city, not only due to the quantity of people but also that the upkeep seemed to be higher.

Most of them trailed back in pairs, but at least one group of three was ahead of us in the crowd somewhere. And a crowd it was. There were an unbelievable number of people in Anwell. The streets turned into an impromptu bazaar the second the sun came up, if the noise that had woken me in the morning was anything to go by.

Being up above it all helped somewhat, but not even the thick stone of the building we were using could absorb the sound entirely.

When we'd left it in the morning, I'd gotten another good look at it, which made me wonder just how much Celistar was spending to put us up there. She wouldn't tell us and didn't seem to think much of it, which I suppose made sense.

Someone who lived as long as she had could take advantage of all sorts of resource-hoarding activities. It made me picture her as some sort of delicate dragon sitting atop a pile of gold, a truly amusing mental image.

Snapping myself back into the present, I felt one of the groups turn away as we moved into a new part of the city, only to be replaced by another up ahead.

"It appears we're being tailed in shifts," I said, using a word from Viktor's vocabulary for the behavior we were seeing.

"How about the other issue?" István asked. Obviously, the threat of possible nefarious groups trailing us paled in comparison to the potential that scientifically interesting things might be happening in the city.

I'm pretty sure if someone threatened to cut off his arm, he'd probably just ask to observe the process and have them take notes for him.

"The one we followed here is completely uniform. The other one varies… a lot. I'm surprised you can't tell." I wanted to be vague, since who knows who was listening and with what methods, but it was pretty obvious that the latter was the sense of weight I'd felt when the seal of silence in our room was disabled.

I wasn't exaggerating either. That newer feeling really did bobble around like Liam trying to decide which dessert to eat first. It was probably the strongest in the area of our accommodations, or I don't think I'd have noticed it, but it varied with almost every step as we walked, and shifted the vector of the 'gravity' it exerted as well, but not in a way I could make sense of. The change was just too frequent.

In the end, we wound up walking almost a full circle, or as much of one as you could around an irregularly shaped city. Most of the people we had in tow had given up or been swapped out, but one in particular had hung strong, even if they never did give us an opportunity to spot them.

That was partially a 'me' problem. I couldn't pin down their location well enough with just my sense of my own powers, I'd have to have done something more drastic, which almost certainly would have let them know we knew.

On the bright side, the tour of the city had given Elder Mountain a mountain of local delicacies to sample, a task he'd taken to with relish. (And other condiments.)

Celistar was leading us inward, at the moment, towards the titular Anwell that gave the city its somewhat-amusing name. It was in a central district, a location of obvious wealth even by the standards of our accommodations, and it was clear that none of the families that originally founded the city could have afforded to live in the location, if they were still around and in the same socioeconomic strata as they had been originally.

"Where is the well?" I asked, when we arrived. I couldn't see anything resembling a water source, just a massive building in the very center of a 'town square' - that was more of a circle - of structures that all had very expensive looking items just sitting out front. Clearly businesses with enough capital that they either afford the losses, or afford to have people guarding them.

My senses told me it was mostly the latter.

"That's it." Celistar said, pointing at the ostentatious structure in the center. Viktor just stood and stared.

"That does not look like a well. Is there even water in there?"

"In the center, yes. It's not publicly accessible anymore..."

"Because of course it isn't." I said, cutting her off a little.

"…because at some point someone claimed it had healing powers, which caused the merchant class in this city to completely monopolize it." She finished, without any acknowledgment of my aside.

"That explains why they built a whole church around it."

"That's not a church." She said, but I really couldn't see it.

"Okay, an altar at which money is worshipped, then."

Even the Moon Fairy couldn't deny that description.

"Greed is indeed a religion," István said, looking at the massive, ornate structure. It towered over us, with crenelations and overhangs in stone that would have required a cultivator to craft, or some sort of building science well outside what I'd seen elsewhere. So probably the former.

Viktor was still gazing at it - having been seemingly lost in thought and thoroughly checked out of our conversation the entire time - before eventually looking at the rest of us.

"So, do you turn the entire thing to make the water come out?"