Chapter 288: The Arcanist Camps

…Sunset came quickly.

Althea summoned her Giant Owl soul mass in the ribcage courtyard under the gazes of June, Caretakers Lance and Osei, and the Adepts who had paused their drills to watch. The Owl morphed up from her shadow and into full form, its wingspan broad enough to darken a wide stretch of the courtyard floor beneath it, its feathers a deep, abyss black that seemed to swallow the last of the evening light.

“Let me come with you, Commander Althea,” June said for what had to be the fifth time since Althea had come down from the command chamber and explained the task that had been handed to her.

And it was not just June, but also other Ossuarists in the fortress who had come to like or at least respect Althea over the course of their stay here, either because she came to their rescue during the initial battle to seize the fortress, or just a general admiration for her skill, power, and poise. Althea was afterall, still someone from the well renowned Ossuarist Seneschal family. Dignified poise was ingrained in her.

Althea only smiled in response to June, giving the same answer she had given every time before. “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”

“How are you okay with this… You’re basically being sent into the lion’s den all alone,” June muttered under her breath. Despite her grievance, she was still sensible enough to know what she could and couldn’t say out loud, especially since this was an order from a Preceptor.

But Althea heard anyway, and her smile deepened wryly as she climbed onto the lowered back of her Giant Owl.

“Put your mind at ease, June. They will not be rash. You don’t know how powerful a Preceptor is, but I do. Even if there was a Grade 1 Master among the Arcanists out there, no matter how worked up any of them get, they will not harm me.”

Perhaps it was the firmness with which Althea said it, but June mellowed somewhat, the sharp edge of her worry dulling even if it did not disappear entirely. She watched as Althea nodded once at her, then turned to nod at Lance and Osei who were standing a short distance away watching quietly. They returned the nod, and she took off immediately.

The Owl carried her up into the sky in smooth, unhurried wingbeats, but not so high that she came anyway close to the roiling congregating mana clouds above.

In fact, after coming clear of the hill-like titan bones, she maneuvered her Owl soul mass to descend much closer to the flat plains that stretched between the fortress and the Arcanists’ camp at the horizon.

Very carefully and very slowly, she coasted over. A white flag of peace hung around the neck of her Owl, strapped securely, fluttering clearly in the evening air for all the scouts and watchers in the Arcanist camps to see from miles away.

Combined with her easy, coasting pace, every camp ahead would have seen her leave the fortress, and have more than enough time to pass word through their ranks and receive instructions on how to handle her arrival before she got there.

Althea was scanning their lines as she drew closer. Already, she could see the division of factions and families much more clearly. The way each camp reacted was different.

The Feraxian camps barely reacted to her approach. The sentries at their perimeter straightened when they spotted her, and a figure moved to the front of their line with the composed, deliberate air of a proper official — a clear show of formal acknowledgement at least. After all, Feraxia wasn’t as strict, and had a much more amicable relationship with the Ossuary aside from their little differences here and there.

The other factions though, were not so welcoming.

The Aethelosian flags were easy to spot from a distance, and the reception they had prepared was equally easy to read from far away.

A young man stood at the front of an entourage, blonde-haired and bare-faced, wearing armor so elaborately polished it caught the last of the evening sun and gleamed like gold.

Behind him, his attendants wore matching gleaming armor, a column of men who together managed to look extremely expensive and entirely ceremonial. They seemed to be the representatives the Aethelosian factions had unanimously decided would receive her…

Needless to say, they obviously weren’t taking her seriously at all.

Althea kept her course straight toward them until she was close enough that she could make out the young man’s expression clearly and he could make out hers. Then, without any change in her pace or her expression, she turned her Owl and headed directly for the Feraxian camp instead.

The young man’s eye twitched visibly.

“This bitch!” His voice carried sharply across the open ground. “Coming here to surrender and she has the guts to snub us!” He spun to face his men. “After her! Bring her to me!”

The beast tamers among his entourage moved first, their mounts faster than the others, cutting across the plain after her. The Elemental Arcanists behind them followed on considerably slower animals, ordinary beasts that were only slightly more capable than standard horses.

“Why are you all so slow! She’s getting away!” he screeched, apparently having forgotten that his own mount was no faster than anyone else’s.

Althea pulled away without effort, her Owl barely exerting itself, and she noted with quiet satisfaction that not a single one of the other Arcanist camps made any move to intercept her as she passed them.

The more hostile camps glowered. Sentries at various perimeters straightened and watched. No one stepped forward. The Preceptor’s arrival had clearly reached every camp in the region, and none of them wanted to be the faction that drew her direct attention by striking the first blow against her appointed representative.

The chase from the Aethelosian camp was half-hearted to the point of embarrassment that she knew they weren’t being serious at all.

Of course her earlier move — turning at the last moment — had been a simple play to test them. The young master and his party of glitter warriors were surely not remotely close to the best the Aethelosian camps could procure. So seeing that no one from their camp with actual capability moved to intercept her confirmed they had received word and made their calculation.

The pitiful chase eventually petered out as their mounts fell further and further behind, the young man’s shouts fading into the distance behind her.

She descended into the Feraxian camp, her Owl soul mass landing softly on the open ground near their perimeter. She dismissed it the moment her feet touched earth and it dissolved back into her shadow cleanly, without any of the dramatic residual energy that less refined Ossuarists tended to leave behind.

The man waiting to receive her watched the dismissal with slightly narrowed eyes, studying the shadow where the Owl had been a moment before with open interest.

“I wasn’t sure when I saw it from the distance,” he said as she approached, “but now that I’ve seen it up close… That’s an Echo Strider Owl, isn’t it?”

Althea raised a brow slightly, then nodded as she walked toward him.

He looked even more impressed after she confirmed it. “You’re Althea Seneschal, are you not? From the Seneschal Ossuarist family?” He extended a hand toward her. “How in the entropic damn did you find one of these alive to claim its soul mass at all? They are practically extinct.”

Althea shook his hand, taken slightly aback by the enthusiasm. It was not what she had expected from a first formal contact across faction lines in the middle of a contested territory. But then she remembered where he was from. Feraxia was the beast tamer continent of the world, and its people knew their beasts with the same depth that Mechanus Ossuarists knew their artifacts and Aethelos families knew their elements. Of course a Feraxian would lose his composure over a rare soul mass before losing it over anything political.

The man seemed to catch himself at the same moment she was reaching that conclusion, clearing his throat with a short sound and pulling his expression back into one that was appropriately formal.

“Apologies. I lost myself there a bit.”

“It’s alright,” Althea said. “Honestly, it assures me of your stance. If you’re comfortable enough to receive me this openly, then I trust you will give what I have to say genuine consideration.”

“Feraxia is not at odds with the Ossuary,” the man responded with a nod, as if he was stating a matter that was of course. “You need not worry yourself on that front. In fact, our camp commander has been expecting you. He asked me to bring you to him the moment you arrived.” He leaned slightly and gestured further into the camp. “If you’ll follow me.”

Althea nodded and fell into step beside him as he led the way inward.

They moved through rows of tents and past crowds of people going about their late business of the day. Beast tamers made up the majority of the camp, as she had expected from a Feraxian camp, and the evidence of that was everywhere — tamed animals staked or sheltered in portable enclosures throughout the camp, the low sounds of beasts settling for the evening, handlers moving between pens.

The smell of animal bodies and charged mana was thick in the air, and the general density of presence gave the camp a vitality that the Ossuarist fortress, for all its advantages, did not have.

Walking through it, the sight made Althea lampoon quietly again about just how crazy the situation of the world currently was.

This world tear had gathered people that were powerful in their own rights from every continent all over the world. Arcanists and Ossuarists from kingdoms that would never have been in the same place under ordinary circumstances, whose factions had entirely different histories with each other, whose understanding of what the world was and what was possible in it had been shaped by entirely different experiences… They were all here in the same space, competing for resources that had no equivalent outside.

Just what kind of world was this?

As Althea’s mind wandered, her thoughts went to the face of a young man she always thought of anytime she was alone…

Finn.

She wondered where he was and how he was doing. Whether he had escaped at all. Whether he’d been able to survive the attack of that… thing…

A frown colored her face as she thought of that creature again.

The Husk.

Just the mere thought of it firmed her into focus again.

That’s right. I shouldn’t forget my main goal…

Get this information to higher echelons of the Ossuary. A gathering of Preceptors, most preferably…

They need to know what we’re up against.

Althea’s demeanor turned solemn.

She could have told Preceptor Odette for a start, but somehow, in some way she couldn’t place her finger on clearly, something about the woman just seemed… off.

“Are you alright, Miss Althea?” the man suddenly said, jarring her from her thoughts.

She looked up and found they had arrived at a very large tent, clearly the commander’s quarters from its size and the positioning of two guards at its entrance who were visibly more capable than anyone else she had passed on the walk through the camp.

“I’m alright,” she said.

The man nodded, his own task apparently complete. He gestured toward the entrance. “Then I won’t keep you. He’s waiting.”

Althea nodded at him, stepped forward, and parted the tent flaps.

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