Chapter 50 - A fateful meeting (1)

After more than an hour, Tobias stopped moving. The winds of the tempest he had generated had swept away the invaders, preventing them from approaching the Perimeter and reducing their numbers to less than a tenth. Yet, several hundred had survived and had resumed their march.

Tobias turned around and walked away, seemingly disinterested.

"Clean up the rest and gather the crystals. This year's harvest is bountiful," he said in a calm tone, although his voice would probably be audible from more than a kilometre away.

All of the people there heeded his words and started to run towards the beast, weapons in hand and a glimmer in their eyes. They ran beside me, both those who had not attended the tournament and those who had, both onlookers and combatants. In a few minutes, the two fronts met each other and started clashing.

The metal weapons clattered against the keratin and pincers tried to cut in half the combatants, causing wounds in the process. I was ready to jump into the fray, just to gain experience in arch-beast fighting, but I was stopped by Tobias' stretched hand even before I could make a single step.

"Child, follow me. You need to recover both your body and your mind. And I would like for the two of us to converse," he said.

I finally paid attention to the state of my body and realised I truly was in no condition to fight. The drunkness given me by the flow of sensations that had been dammed until a while ago was still influencing me, but I needed to regain self-control. I couldn't let excitement or murderous instincts bring me to my demise, although I felt the strong need to jump into the battle. Due to not having felt much of anything for so long, the heat of battle was addictive.

I followed Tobias, keeping his brisk pace while walking unsteadily on my wounded legs. Even my heels had been reached by Lily's twin blades, through trajectories that wouldn't be reproducible by anyone else following normal natural laws. For some reason, even if not explicitly called, Lily decided to come with us.

While the furious fires of battle continued to burn, we reached an apparently unassuming house. It was a small cottage, with a thatched roof and a stone exterior. At first glance, one wouldn't notice anything particular, but at a closer inspection, it could be observed that the marble resembling stone had no veins and the whitish colour was that of ivory. Moreover, not even a speck of dirt or dust could be found on any of the walls or even in between the specks of straw. A great deal of attention was clearly reserved for this building in particular. It was easy to infer the reason for this: this modest peculiar dwelling was the house of the Lord of the Perimeter.

Tobias opened the reddish door, which seemed to have been carved from a single log of mahogany, and we followed behind him. Before Lily could step inside, Tobias' voice resounded.

"My dear, please wait outside. I wish to talk privately with our guests. Do not eavesdrop"

His tone had turned grave.

"... Yes, father," Lily sheepishly responded, closing the door and leaving us alone. Although archs cherished their offsprings, this didn't mean they couldn't be harsh or resolute.

Complete darkness enveloped us. Tobias spent some time leisurely walking around the room and lighting candles. To do this he picked up a metal file placed on a dresser and scraped it with his fingernails to create the needed sparks.

Soon, the soft candlelight lit up the room. This arrangement of the illuminations created an effect similar to that of dusk, but for our eyes, things appeared as clear as day. The room was incredibly barren and it was the only one making up the house.

There was a small wardrobe made from an ashen wood I couldn't recognize, a small dresser seemingly made of oak and a granite throne centred in front of the door and positioned against the opposite end of the room.

Various candelabra and weapon stands accommodating a great number of different weapons, from simple daggers to long halberds, carpeted the wall. The most curious piece of furniture was a big stone slate placed in a corner, on which various stylized scenes were engraved or painted.

I found myself unable to decipher the exact meaning behind these scenes, but there was a shared denominator between all of them, which was the stylized representation of a simplified human figure wielding what resembled some kind of long-bladed weapon. One of the things that made it difficult to interpret the drawings was that most of them didn't seem to have been carved or painted by human hands.

I understood that this was an artefact from beyond this world and that the man portrayed was none other than Tobias. Although I didn't know his exact age, I was certain he was incredibly old, old enough to have seen many things and experienced most of what this world and others could offer.

That was the reason why I had prepared myself to answer truthfully to anything Tobias would ask me. Lying would be perceived only as disrespect and rudeness, due to the fact that his eyes and experience enabled him to "see the truth" in the words and actions of others, or at least they made him able to determine if the other party was being untruthful.

From what I remembered, the only thing he required from people was to be polite when conversing with him. Anything his interlocutor may say if expressed honestly and civilly would be tolerated in more cases than not.

There was a good possibility he wouldn't even bat an eye if someone came to him and told him he despised him and his daughter and would kill them both; but he might decide to detach their head from their body if he saw them, for example, click their tongue to his words.

People like him, who had reached the peak of power, wouldn't care about how those weaker than them behaved, as long as they weren't rude, although this last word could take on a slightly different meaning.

Curiously, the idea of characterising powerful beings by giving them this distinctive behaviour wasn't actually mine. I didn't obviously remember exactly where I had picked it up, as it had to do with memories regarding my previous life, but at least I knew it came from a third party; I had simply liked it and incorporated it into my world.

Tobias walked ahead of me and sat on the granite throne with closed eyes. Once he seemed comfortable, he opened his eyes and fixed his gaze on my face. Exactly as it had been before, his mouth was smiling while his eyes were not and his stare drilled a hole through my skull.

"Child. Please allow me to ask you some questions," he said in a calm but firm tone.