Chapter 160: You See The Temple

Elias moved through the underbelly of the city before he began to near the sea, and he slowly stopped moving.

He did not even know why he was stopping before he realized that it was the sea in front of him… that special intuition inside of him informed him that getting closer to the sea would be a great mistake.

Elias listened to that intuition, and he turned his back to the ocean. He was not arrogant enough to push forward towards an unknown danger that even his Elder Talent was wary of.

He turned around and began to return towards the middle part of the city, idly noting that the woman and the youths had disappeared, and in the soft breeze, he thought he heard the sound of a cry. There were a dozen similar cries that he could perceive, and Elias saw it as the way of the world… the weak get eaten by the strong.

Placing his head down, Elias walked through the lower districts, and although he drew certain glances of interest, his demeanor and the faint air of power that surrounded him were enough for anyone with a working brain to look away from him.

As he moved towards the middle districts heading for the region that should be referred to as the Guild district, Elias encountered scenes that made him pause, as they made him think and feel in ways he had not expected.

One of them stood out to him, and it was between two men who were standing in the middle of a narrow street, shouting at each other while a small crowd watched.

Elias had to push people aside for him to pass, and he decided to slow down a bit just to watch what was happening.

One of the shouting men was a Fury Forge that must have pumped all of his points into his physique because of his bulging muscles; his hands were also crackling with electricity.

The other was a Wisp, thin and desperate, holding a child behind his back.

“You owe me!” the Fury Forge roared. “Three months of protection, and you think you can just stop paying?”

“I paid you last week!” the Wisp shouted back. “I gave you everything I had! Look at my daughter, she’s starving because I gave you our food money!”

The Fury Forge glanced at the child, a girl of perhaps six, with huge eyes and skin stretched too thin over her bones. For a moment, something flickered in his expression; was it guilt or shame, Elias wondered?

Then whatever he had seen on the face of the man vanished as his visage hardened.

“Not my problem.” He raised his hand, electricity arcing between his fingers.

Elias moved, not to intervene; he was not a hero, and there was no practical benefit he could gain from stopping this situation except to draw eyes that were not needed. Besides, he could not feel any killing intent from the buff Fury Forge, and so Elias was only moving to get a better angle. He wanted to see how this would end before he moved on.

However, a woman stepped from the crowd. She was old, older than anyone Elias had ever seen, her face a map of wrinkles, her eyes milky with cataracts. She walked with a cane that looked like it would snap at any moment.

“Enough,” she said.

The Fury Forge laughed. “Get out of here, old woman, before I—”

He stopped. His eyes went wide. The electricity around his hand died.

The old woman had not moved. She had not threatened him, and she had simply looked at him.

“You have three seconds to leave before I remind you what respect means. The girl is now one of mine,” she said quietly.

The Fury Forge’s eyes widened in shock, and he fled, and the crowd quickly dispersed when they saw the old woman.

Helping the Wisp and his daughter to their feet and pressing a small pouch of money into his hands, the old woman disappeared into an alley before Elias could even blink.

He stood there for a long moment, his hunter’s mind replaying the scene. The old woman had not used Lumina, nor had she used a Talent; she had used something else, something Elias could not name, but after a short moment, he realized what it was.

“That look…” Elias muttered to himself, “Power is not always in the fist, he thought. Sometimes it’s in the eyes. Reputation can also be a source of power.”

With that thought in mind, Elias blocked the rest of the activities of the city from his mind and began to move faster, as it was approaching midday already, and a few blocks later, Elias came across a merchant’s stall that made him stop in his tracks.

The stall was small and unremarkable, tucked between a tannery and a tavern, and what drew Elias’ attention was the fact that this particular spot once belonged to the merchant who sold him fake goods.

This spot was the prime spot for commerce, and it was not a surprise that someone else had taken over this place; however, if the previous merchant was a fraud, this one may be a bigger one, or must be something quite special because of the items on display… were frankly ridiculous.

There was a dagger whose blade seemed to drink the light around it, leaving a faint shadow in the air. There was a necklace made of teeth; they were not animal teeth, but something else, something that almost made Elias’s skin crawl.

Furthermore, there was a book bound in leather that was still warm, as if it had been flayed from a living creature moments ago.

The merchant was a small, rat-faced man with quick eyes and quicker hands. He saw Elias looking and grinned, revealing teeth filed to points.

“See something you like, friend? I have items from across Trion, from the depths of the Maw, from the peaks of the God-King’s throne, from places that don’t even have names.”

Elias said nothing. His Perception was screaming at him that every item on this stall was wrong. They were not just magical, they were cursed. He could see the faint, sickly glow of malignant Lumina clinging to each one like rot.

“Not today,” he said, and moved on.

Behind him, the merchant’s grin widened. “Come back when you’re ready to pay the price, friend. Everyone pays eventually… especially in times like this when the end is so near.”

Elias began walking faster, and when he turned around to look behind him, the merchant and his wares were gone.

He did not think he had hallucinated the entire incident, and he thought that this was one of the reasons mortals were forbidden from coming close to Lumina because of the unknown effects and the strange occurrences that were bound to happen to them.

However, he did not think that what he had seen was because of the effects of Lumina; that man was stranger than that.

He was only a few blocks away from the Guild when he noticed a small temple at the edge of the Guild district.

With his newfound understanding of stone, he realized that this temple was old, older than the Asylum; it even felt older than the city itself.

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