Chương 419: (412) 6.26. Prepare Yourself

Following the unexpected brawl between Waltz and Curash and his interview with Avaline, Vin decided to take things easy for the rest of the day. He wanted desperately to talk to Lumel about everything that was going on, and it took him returning to an empty apartment after such an eventful day to realize just how much he was missing her. She'd only been on her dream journey for about a week at this point, which meant even if she completed hers as quickly as he had, she still had another solid week to go.

Deciding the best way to take his mind off her was with a little magic practice, Vin got settled in the common room and slipped into Introspection, going back to his latest project he'd already put a few hours into during his experiments with dream magic. The rest of the day was spent finishing up the spell, and Vin was pleased to exit Introspection and find the expected notification waiting for him. New spell learned! Tier 1 Soul Spell (Soul Mark). 5, 000 exp gained.

Putting together a new spell from scratch rather than copying a runic formation always filled Vin's chest with pride, and he went to bed with a smile on his face, choosing to forgo spell practice this time around. He hadn't gotten any real sleep the last few days with all the time he'd spent trying to work on artifact creation, and his interview with Avaline had tired him out more than any monster battle he'd been in.

Vin awoke the next day to someone banging on the front door of their apartment, and he rubbed at his eyes as he got up. It wasn't often he woke up from something other than his cloud pillow dissipating out from underneath his head, and he quickly threw some clothes on before stepping out into the common room.

"Would you mind opening the door and kicking whoever that is in the shin for me?" Scule asked, rubbing at his own bleary eyes before glaring at the front door.

"I'd do it myself, but I don't think it would really have the same effect, you know?"

"Sorry," Vin said, fulfilling half of Scule's request as he opened the door, only to find Spur standing there, his fist already raised to knock again.

"Spur? What are you doing here?"

"It's going to be a bit of an eventful day, so I figured I'd come give you the news myself," he said, walking inside before Vin could say anything.

"Close the door. Not that I think anyone is listening in this early anyway, but no sense leaking the news too early."

"What news? What's going on?" Vin asked, not missing the fact that Scule had already vanished through the tiny petian-sized door that had been built into his own bedroom door. He knew the petian wasn't the biggest fan of Spur, but he'd hoped Scule would have gotten over that in time.

"Terra's about to have its first trial. And you're going to be in it," Spur stated bluntly.

"Wait, what? A trial? Since when do we do that?"

"Since now," Spur sighed, all but throwing himself down onto one of their chairs as he pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Abby found me the moment I got back and explained both what happened and what she wanted to do about it. The fact of the matter is this is a first for Terra. We've had plenty of fights and people getting injured due to other's carelessness, but nothing of this scale. Waltz ended up hitting twenty-six innocent bystanders with crossbow bolts when he attacked Curash. Seventeen Bands and nine Earthers. Frankly, it was a miracle nobody was killed or maimed."

"It was really that many?" Vin winced, recalling the sheer amount of blood he'd seen spilled across the ground.

"Oh yeah. Mind you, that was twenty-six people hit, not how many injuries there were. Five of them ended up getting shot more than once. Stupid, cool, dual-wielding beastkin…"

"So how does that make this turn into a trial?" Vin asked, trying to get back on track.

"Wouldn't you just wave your sword over Waltz' head and do your whole Traitor-bane thing and call it a day?"

"No, that wouldn't work. Waltz genuinely wants to help his people and Terra as a whole, he's no traitor to the town. It was just his burning desire to kill Curash that resulted in this happening. We could just come together as a council and announce our judgement, but Abby is rightfully worried about what might happen if we do. The fact of the matter is that, as far as the Bands are concerned, Waltz didn't actually do anything wrong.

With what the Red Dawn did to them all those months, most of them hate Curash's guts as well, even if not to the same level as Waltz does. And put frankly, they're a tough people. Nobody was killed, and none of them seem mad at Waltz for what he did. What's a few crossbow bolts here and there between friends, you know?"

"So Abby thinks if we let the council handle this privately, it might cause an actual revolt with the Bands," Vin said slowly, seeing what Spur was getting at.

"Waltz is pretty much the de-facto leader of the Bands at this point," Spur admitted.

"Even if they don't have an official leadership, everyone knows that Waltz is the one in charge of their small offshoot village. If we aren't completely transparent with how we handle this, it could cause a serious fissure in Terra. At this point, the Bands make up about fifteen percent of the total population. That's no small number. If we exile their leader, or worse, execute him, and they don't feel like they had the chance to argue their part of the story, things could get ugly."

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"I see what you mean," Vin said, still shocked to hear that Terra was going to have an actual public trial of all things.

"Wait, do we even have a courthouse?"

"Witherson is building one as we speak. Crazy what you can do with a handful of Stone Mages and a rowdy population demanding to know what's to be done about the 'rabid beastkin' who went on a shooting spree yesterday. The extremely small group of human supremacists we've yet to manage to stamp out are having a field day with this. Just one more thing we have to worry about."

"What do you need me to do?"

"Ideally? Use some of that Roamer charm and make this whole thing go away," Spur snorted.

"Like I said, we're going to be making this public, and seeing as there are always people looking for something to do around here, I wouldn't be surprised if a good half of Terra tries to attend the trial. We're not going to be able to fit that many people in the new courthouse of course, so we'll be doing a lottery system. We thought about just holding the trial out in the colosseum, but we decided that would be unfairly biased due to the idea people have around colosseums from back on Earth."

"Beyond my 'Roamer charm', anything else? I assume I'm just going to explain what happened from my perspective?"

"Of all the Earthers, you know Waltz and Curash the best," Spur pointed out.

"We'll probably have some of the Bands give their own takes on each of the men, but you're going to be the bridge. You're the one who led the Bands to Terra in the first place, and the one who helped coordinate the strike team with the elves of the Sacred Forest to wipe out the Red Dawn. The Bands might look to Waltz as their leader, but you're the person who brought them safety and gave them a chance at living normal lives again."

"I spoke to Waltz and Curash all of about two times each before all this," Vin argued, before letting out a weary sigh.

"Though I can't fight you on the rest of the Bands. Alright, I'll do what I can to try and keep tempers down. But I'm not going to lie, I'll tell you that now."

"Are you kidding? In a world with truth-detecting magics, nobody is going to be telling anyone to lie. Except maybe Golrim, what with his whole enchanted ribcage and everything." With his warning delivered, and a soft recommendation to perhaps lay low until the trial took place tomorrow, Spur took his leave. As soon as he was gone, Scule walked out once more, this time with Reginald in tow.

"Wow, sounds like you've got your hands full tomorrow," Scule said, hopping up onto the table.

"What do you think is going to happen?"

"Honestly? I don't have a clue," Vin admitted.

"I understand Waltz' anger, but in my opinion, he's definitely the one in the wrong here. I mean, twenty-six people got hit with crossbow bolts because he let himself be blinded by rage. Even so, like Spur said, there's a good chance the Bands won't see things that way, and that's the real problem. We need to find a way to hold Waltz accountable for his actions without angering the rest of the Bands."

"It's times like this I'm glad I don't have to worry about much more than ensuring nobody is looking at me when I permanently borrow something that isn't mine," Scule said, causing Reginald to shake his head.

"So you're staying inside today? Want me to go grab you a bite to eat?"

"If you wouldn't mind, I'd appreciate it. At least I can get started on some new spellwork. Though I guess I can't do anything too dangerous if I'm stuck in here…"

"Oh, didn't I mention? Witherson and her crafters didn't just build me a lab in the basement," Scule said, grinning as he pointed down toward the floor.

"We all asked them to make one other addition while they were already here and hard at work. There's a 'Vin room' down there as well. It's basically just a heavily reinforced stone box, designed to withstand a decent-sized explosion. You should be good to practice whatever you want down there without worrying about runic backlashes impacting the rest of us. So long as you're not practicing any super weird magic I guess."

"You guys are just the best," Vin smiled.

"Alright then, I suppose I know what I'll be doing for the rest of the day. Oh, and before I forget. As promised." Vin went back into his room and pulled out the petian-sized Neutralize Poison amulet he'd created, handing it over to Scule.

"Do I even want to know what you're planning to do with this?"

"What, a man can't request a poison-related artifact without raising questions?" Scule asked, happily tucking it away in his cape.

"Nah, nothing wild. Nute and Copi were asking me more detailed questions about my alchemical experiments last time I visited home, and I thought it would be fun to show them. I didn't want to risk either of them getting hurt."

"That's sweet of you! I suppose it has been about a month since you last saw them, huh?"

"Yep. Figured I'd take advantage of all this craziness to run over there and check in on them. Copi will have selected his class as of about two weeks ago, so I'm a bit nervous," Scule admitted, scratching his neck.

"Regardless, I'll let them know you said hi. Let me go grab you some food before I head out."

"Thanks again," Vin said, sharing a quick, silent look with Reginald that boiled down to keep him out of trouble, alright? The rat picked up on it easily enough, saluting Vin with his tail before following Scule out the door. Heading into their new basement, Vin whistled as he took in the stone bunker that had clearly been designed with him in mind.

Witherson had definitely gone above and beyond to ensure he wouldn't hurt anyone other than himself should he suffer a particularly nasty runic backlash, and he made a mental note to thank her and her crafters for all their hard work next he saw her.

"A whole day dedicated to spellwork," he muttered, creating a cloud in the center of the room and sitting on it as he thought over his options. With Soul Mark over and done with, he didn't have anything he was working on at the moment. What he did have was the image of Curash being turned into a pincushion before his very eyes and the feeling of utter helplessness that came with it.

All it took was replacing Curash's face with any one of his friends' to cement the idea in his mind that that was where he should focus his efforts.

"A new defensive spell to protect against projectiles…" Vin muttered, leaning back as he got to work coming up with ideas. He had quite a lot of potential spells to try merging together to create what he wanted, which meant Spell Weaver was about to get a serious workout.