Edge Cases

Chapter 20: Conclusions

Chapter 20: Conclusions

"Your truth spells were fooled," Derivan interrupted Tarilex. The lizardkin stopped mid-sentence, turning his gaze to the armor and staring for a long, uncomfortable moment.

"Explain," he said. His voice was hard.

"You have been running some sort of truth spell this entire time," Derivan said. "I wondered why you were acting strangely. You could not trust your spell or skill with the Guildmaster because she has perception-based skills that operate well enough to obscure her even in this space, when she is suppressed; that is why you wanted us here. You wanted to run the spell on us, to see what we revealed."

"Ridiculous," Tarilex tried to scoff, but his voice was uncertain, and the Guildmaster's eyes had hardened. The other four members of the delegation were still completely silent and that was strange, too, wasn't it? "You can't prove that."

Derivan frowned at him. "You were not truly angry at me earlier, when I misspoke. The politics here matter less to you than the sincerity of the person you're speaking to. You softened when Sev spoke to you, because he spoke only the truth when he spoke of the infolock, and of what it meant to him. It confirmed to you that we were being at least partially truthful, and that he had a friend he wanted to help.

"You did not truly feel upset until Misa spoke of a bonus room."

"Oh." Vex frowned, leaning forward a bit. He still seemed to be a bit nervous about speaking, but he was focusing on the problem at hand, now, following Derivan's train of thought. "You wanted to give us the benefit of the doubt I mean, kind of. You didn't trust us, but you wanted to give our story a chance. And since we were being deceptive when we talked about a bonus room, you picked up on that and thought we were lying about knowing anything about a bonus room at all."

"That's why you were being such an ass?" Sev groaned. "You know you could have just asked. We wouldn't have had a problem with being subjected to a truth spell."

"He couldn't. If you're prepared for a truth spell, there are a lot of ways around them, so you usually don't want to let your targets know that you're running one. If truth spells were more reliable, I would have pushed to have one active for all negotiations, just to guarantee that all participants were acting in good faith." The Guildmaster frowned. "No skills are allowed here. The wards on the pillars prevent spells of any kind. Even my skills barely work beyond securing my identity. I need to know what loophole you used so I can close it."

"We would never break the rules established by our esteemed hosts," Tarilex said, fidgeting uncomfortably.

For an individual that seemed well-versed in truths and lies, Derivan mused, he was rather bad at lying.

Vex blinked, and frowned. His eyes began to glow for a moment before they stopped, suppressed by the enchantments, and he had to blink away the sudden dizziness.

"I was wondering why four of you were so quiet. You have a delegation of five, but one person does all the talking." Vex frowned "This can't be a real truth spell. It has to be something passive, or some sort of tandem skill..."

"Both of those should be suppressed by the enchantments," the Guildmaster said, then frowned. "But if they're working cooperatively, they might be able to subvert it slightly. Maybe?"

"Maybe." Vex narrowed his eyes slightly. "Guildmaster, can I have permission to do something?"

"...Sure?" The Guildmaster stared at Vex for a second. "Sure."

Vex twisted around, digging into his tailpouch, then retrieved the bagged sample of Drunkard's Beard he'd picked up on a whim. Then he tossed it at Tarilex, who yelped, reaching out almost instinctively to catch it.

Almost instantly, he swayed in his seat.

No almost instantly, all five of them swayed in their seats.

"What..." Tarilex groaned slightly, shaking his head. "What?"

"Okay, give that back to me now," Vex said, reaching out for it. Tarilex blinked blearily at the other lizardkin, then obediently handed the little pouch back. Almost instantly, he seemed to recover, his eyes sharpening.

"What the hell was that?" Tarilex said, and Vex flinched again.

"Sorry. I didn't think it was fair to engage with you while you were compromised," the lizardkin apologized. "But I needed to test that. You're from the Wisfield house, aren't you?"

"How do you know about that?" Tarilex frowned at him.

"I'm from the Ashion house," Vex answered, ignoring the way Tarilex paled and stared at him like he'd grown a second head. "I've worked with your house before. Last I heard, you were trying to find a way to turn your mental skills into some sort of biologically-based bloodline. Did you actually succeed?"

"I that's privileged information, si that's privileged information," Tarilex managed, but failing to have any real heat in his voice.

The Guildmaster was just watching, amused. Derivan saw that she was rather enjoying this, actually. Presumably, she enjoyed seeing them caught on the back foot.

"You're in some kind of mental amalgam," Vex said, frowning a little bit. "That's always been dangerous with your magic. So you're still partially suppressed, and you're doing this to boost the skill?"

Tarilex shook his head, seeming to strain for a moment as his emotions built, too complicated now for Derivan to read until something seemed to snap, an invisible, taut tension abruptly vanishing.

"Shit," Tarilex gasped, and at the same time the human woman who sat two seats away twitched and scowled.

"There is another problem," Derivan observed; Tarilex's body language was still... reserved. Like he was afraid of saying something? "What have you not told us?"

"I work with mental magic and somehow that's more unnerving," Tarilex muttered to himself, then sighed.

"Look. I said my hands were tied because I we already made a deal with Jerome, and part of that deal involves connections he still had with some of Anderstahl's suppliers. He's on the delving team for the mission."

"Can you remove him?" The Guildmaster asked.

"We can." Tarilex paused, clearly uncomfortable. He winced. "He came to us under false pretenses, so... we can. Do you want us to?"

The Guildmaster glanced at the team of adventurers in the room with her. "I think that's up to you. This is enough of an offense for him to be ejected from the guild, too, on top of the demotion."

There was a short silence.

"...I'm not sure that's a good idea," Vex said slowly. "He might have a mind-altering artifact on him... and does he actually have anywhere to go?"

"He was kicked out of Anderstahl," the Guildmaster said. "So he'd have to find somewhere on his own. I'm sure many villages could use the help of a Gold ranker to gather crystals."

"I don't think I trust him to hold a position of power in a village," Sev said.

"I... would offer to hold him, but there would likely be some resistance on this matter." Tarilex grimaced slightly. He seemed reluctant to speak, but he shrank under the weight of their gazes, and eventually forced himself to do so. "Elyra has had some recent problems with food production, and the suppliers that Jerome has connected us to would pull out if we were to renege on this deal. Incarcerating him might cause even more pushback. We're already partially reliant on those suppliers."

"And the Guild doesn't really do prisons." The Guildmaster frowned for a moment. "It's a drain on our resources to hold and suppress people for that length of time. If an adventuring team is a problem, we usually give them minders, and split them up if need be."

There was a long pause.

"I think we gotta let Jerome stay on the delve, guys," Sev eventually said. "The food deal is the clincher for me here."

"It's kinda shit," Misa said. "But I think he's gonna cause more problems if we let him run around or keep him in a box. He seems like the kinda guy that would just build resentment. And I don't wanna be the one to push him into that. If we keep an eye on him, make sure he doesn't get into trouble... At least we can actually supervise him if he's going to be delving."

The Guildmaster sighed, not disagreeing. "Jerome is... we accepted him because he had nowhere else to go, but we have not had nearly enough time to work with him. He is shallow and vindictive, and it will take effort to undo this. Effort and time that we have not had yet. But it still feels like a failure on the part of the Guild, and I am sorry for that."

Tarilex seemed relieved. "Jerome's team is mostly interested in delves; hopefully there will be minimal interaction between you two. I do not wish to explain why I took on a second adventuring team."

"It's best he doesn't find out which team actually discovered the dungeon," the Guildmaster agreed. "In any case, I think that more or less concludes negotiations on this matter. I'm sure we all have a lot to think about. Tarilex, if we are to perform further negotiations, I look forward to all participants actually... participating."

The other delegates had the good grace to look vaguely ashamed, at least. Derivan looked over them of the four, Leben, the orc priest, seemed to feel the most guilty.

"You should leave first," the Guildmaster added, directing the statement to Derivan and the others. "I need to go over the wards to see if they can be tweaked to account for this, and then we'll see what we settle on regarding Jerome. I might need to send people to keep an eye on him, on top of having you four there."

"I'm getting increasingly concerned with how you're talking about this man like he's going to murder us because we found a dungeon and he got scolded for being an ass about it," Sev said mildly, getting up from his chair.

"Transportation circle is that way," the Guildmaster said, ignoring him and pointing.

Sev eyed her for a moment. "You realize you're supposed to say something reassuring."

"I'm sure Jerome won't find out."

"That's even less reassuring." Sev sighed, striding towards the door; the rest of his team filed after him. "Okay!" he called back to the Guildmaster as they stepped on to the transportation circle. "We're all going to fill out our last wills and testaments! Wish us luck!"

The Guildmaster, amusingly enough, gave him the finger though from the lack of reaction from the rest of his party, Derivan thought he might have been the only one that caught it. Anti-perception skills were strange. She winked at him, though, so he assumed she expected him to see it.

What a strange Guildmaster, he thought.

The transportation circle flashed.

A silver-armored paladin stood in their room, leaning against the door.

"Hello," Jerome said.