Phantasm

“Well, that was ominous,” I said to the closed door that the Deputy left behind him.

“It’s a dangerous world,” Janie said. “I guess they don’t want the guests lowering their guard.”

“Good advice then,” I said. “Let’s get unpacked.”

We all found our rooms and unpacked our belongings. As you might expect, they’d found us a suite with the correct number of rooms, although Maslin and Cutter would be rooming in the servant’s quarters. There were two servant's rooms, but they had bunk beds, so they could sleep four total.

“I seem to be short on servants,” I observed. “Are you guys alright with sharing one room?”

Both of the boys shrugged. “It's more room than we had back in the orphanage,” Cutter said.

“Great. That means that Rhis can use that one, the one that has a connecting door to my room.”

Yes, I’d brought Rhis. Not the smartest idea, but I was lacking good options. I didn’t want him to get too far away from me in case he got ideas. Not ideas about killing people, he had those all the time. No, it was actionable plans that I was worried about if I wasn’t around to tell him no.

Of course, we hadn’t activated him yet. Before we could, we needed to search the place. Call it a delver’s paranoia, but I had a feeling that we weren’t going to be left unobserved.

First was a magical inspection by the four people with Mana Sense. Maslin wasn’t going to see much, but he needed the practice. There was actually a lot of it, more than I’d seen anywhere outside of a dungeon. The lights were magical, the bathroom was magical. There were wards on the windows, and on both the doors leading out of the suite. Sophisticated ones, from what I could tell.

Since we would be expected to use the doors, I assumed that they merely sent a notification to some central watch post. Observing how the magical flows responded to actions, I was able to determine that they could both detect someone passing through the door and whether the door was open or closed.

The windows were much the same, although they weren’t meant to be climbed through, we managed to trigger it by sticking an arm through. No alarms sounded, nor did a posse of guards show up looking for an intruder, so it looked like, at least during the day, no action was taken.

The wards didn’t respond to sudden changes of light or sound in the room, so if they were spying on us it wasn’t done through them. So we kept looking.

A physical inspection turned up nothing as well. Our time in trap-filled dungeons served us well here, having trained us to be nicely paranoid. We didn’t neglect the floor and ceiling either. The floor did conceal a surprise, they had underfloor heating, which was nice.

Checking the ceiling did provide us with the amusing sight of Kyle lifting up Cutter so that he could examine it closely. Other than that, there was nothing.

Eventually, we were forced to concede that if there was a spy port, we couldn’t find it. It was time to bring out Rhis. Again, this wasn’t the smartest idea, but given the elevated mana levels in the city he was probably active, and I didn’t think it was right just to leave him tucked away at the bottom of my luggage.

Activating and re-linking the enchantment was easy enough, and soon Rhis was standing before us.

“Hey everyone! Wow, this is nice.” He looked around at the room. Leave it to Rhis to mostly focus on the architecture. It was nice though. To me, it had a bit of a five-star hotel feel. Not the actual hotel rooms, but the lobby. The opalime stone was covered by wood panelling in the bedrooms, but it was on full display out here in the common room. The furniture was all of excellent craftsmanship, ornately decorated and only fairly uncomfortable. This world had a lot to learn about comfy sofa technology but, unfortunately, I wasn’t the one to teach them.

I placed Rhis’s core in a bag, which we placed on his belt. We also had new clothes for him, which included a hood. Cutter and Maslin’s uniforms also had hoods, so we were hoping that with his face concealed he’d be mistaken for one of them.

“It’s going to be tough to hide you from the maids when they come in to clean,” I groused. You kids remember how to deactivate the illusion if you need to?”

They all nodded.

“Alright, let's see about dinner.” All our searching and unpacking had used up the afternoon. I went out to see the guards.

“Excuse me, but can you tell us where we’re supposed to eat?” I asked the man.

“Ah, the feast hall has space reserved for guests, ma’am, but it’s customary for people to eat in their suite on their first day. If you let me know your preferences, I can pass it on to the kitchens.”

“That sounds great, we’ll take our meal in the suite, thanks,” I said. “Also tomorrow, we wanted to take a look at the city? Do we need passes to get back into the palace or something?”

“There’s no need,” the Guard smiled politely. “We have escorts for guests who go out, so they can vouch for you when you get back in.”

“Of course, but we wouldn’t want to bother you with that for every little shopping expedition,” I said, laughing a little.

“All guests are to be escorted, by order of the Chamberlain,” the guard repeated, his smile getting a little more bland.

That was weird. It might sound conceited, but I wasn’t used to people saying no to me. Between my [Charm] and [Persuasion], people were normally falling over themselves to agree with me. Could this be… I checked my logs.

Ah. Resisted by [Bureaucracy]. So this was what it looked like on the other side. From the looks of it, the Chamberlain had a much higher skill than I did. Still, [Bureaucracy] wasn’t just about direct opposition. I activated the skill, and let it feel out the situation.

“Would it be… possible to apply to the Chamberlain for an exception to his order?” I asked hesitantly.

“Ah, I know such exceptions exist, but I’m not aware of the conditions required,” the guard admitted.

“Thank you, you’ve been very helpful,” I said and returned to the suite.

Dinner was served about an hour later. First came a long table with matching chairs, brought in by servants. More servants began setting places and table arrangements as we watched until finally, the food arrived.

Had I not asked, they wouldn’t have set places for the kids at the main table. I think they expected them to eat in the kitchens. Having set places for them, I then had to make sure that the kids weren’t served wine.

It was… familiar, in a weird way, to see that the upper classes here did the same ritual for wine that we had back home. As the one in charge, I was offered a selection of bottles to choose from, based on my no doubt superior sensibilities and taste. I cheated, guessing that the wine steward would know his wines, and used [Bargain] to determine which bottle he valued more.

He looked surprised at my choice, perhaps not expecting a commoner’s taste to match his own, but moved on to opening the bottle with a ceremonial flourish. He poured the wine into goblets for us and then bowed out, allowing the food to be served.

Full service in this world was a little intense for my taste. Rather than a menu, a selection of meals was brought out and served to us as we requested. Courses appeared to have not been invented yet, everything we wanted was piled on the same plate or a separate bowl, and once everyone had been served, the leftovers were taken away.

Since this was a ‘small, intimate’ meal, the servants would leave once everything had been served, and only come back if called, or once the meal was done. They all bowed to us, as we sat at the table and watched them depart. After the hustle and bustle of the serving process, the room felt quiet and empty. We all looked at each other, wondering who would be the first to break the silence.

“Well, here’s to our first night in Dorsay,” I said, raising my glass. Clinking glasses was déclassé, [Charm] told me, so I didn’t do that. Instead, I toasted my companions and took a sip.

Oh. This was actually good wine. The kind of wine that the partners would sometimes splash around for the hoi polloi when they were showing off. I took another sip.

“So… it looks like they keep us under observation while we’re in the capital,” I told the others. “We might be able to get an exemption, or if I get a good look at their passes, I might be able to fake one.”

“Can’t we just sneak in and out?” Cutter asked.

“I wouldn’t count on it. The amount of magic on this building, they’ve probably got the chokepoints covered with enchantments. It could be that those passes are actually tokens for the security field, in which case, I don’t think I can fake them.”

“Do we really need to worry about that? We’re not actually here to conduct secret business.” Felicia asked.

I shrugged. “I just don’t like the idea of them knowing where we are all the time. This place is already starting to feel like a prison.”

“Will the enchantments register me? Rhis said. There was no place for him at the table, since he couldn’t eat, and he wasn’t officially here, but I’d magicked up a temporary chair for him. Everyone looked at him. “Since I’m not a person,” he explained.

“Maybe not,” I mused. “If they do, we’ll have to be careful to make sure that they don’t count more people as having left than arrived. Let’s have you check with the window alarms once it’s daylight again.

“That can probably wait until we’ve checked out this place,” Janie put in. “First thing we need to do is find out where this kitchen is.”

I laughed. The food was pretty good. It went with the wine, which was giving me a pleasant numbing sensation. Which was odd, wasn’t it? I’d only had two sips. Well, three or four at the most. I looked down at the goblet and found that I was having trouble raising it.

“Wait… somethings wrong,” I slurred. “Felicia…” I looked over at her and was alarmed to see that she was swaying as well. As I watched, she slowly leaned over onto Kyle, who was also looking groggy.

There was a thump as Cutter fell off his chair. This wasn’t looking good. Maslin was looking around, still alert and now alarmed, but he wasn’t an [Alchemist]. Racking my brains only one idea came to mind. It was crazy, but it might be just crazy enough to work.

Rhis was already at my side, easing me down to the floor. The bond between us didn’t actually need words, he knew what I needed, even if I couldn’t get the words out clearly. I felt a certain amount of shame. After all my talk about not ordering him around, I’d started using the bond as soon as things got dangerous. Though, this particular order was one that he’d been waiting to get for a long time. At my thought, he pulled out his core and placed my hand upon it.

Instantiate Construct? [Y/N]

Yes. Save us.