it was an ugly morning
that recognition ceremony the archbishop wanted us to be part of?
as ponies say "the grass ate the rabbits" – it went unexpectedly badly
the ceremony was also to recognize a devoted flamist "arclight" who we knew to be one of the experiments of merrix 1 and possessed by a child of the last wish
everyone's thrilled that he led 400 forged to claim a city as thrane territory and only got half of them killed
except they're not actually thrilled
most of the crowd didn't seem to want to be there but there were plenty of armed guards there to subtly encourage them to stay
relic says it's as if thrane wants to incite rebellion ... and acts intended to spread conflict always remind me of the winterwolves
we met solgar dariznu
meledri confirmed that he's definitely involved in the whole fiend problem but she says he's too big for us to do anything about right now and her judgement has been solid on such matters
solgar opened the ceremony and he's a fine speaker but it was obvious he used magic to sway the crowd
he called us to the stage and we each received thanks and some sort of little ritual that involved dabbing oil on our foreheads
everyone seemed confused by the appearance of medya and myself ... more so than we get in sharn or the other cities we've been in
but i tried to show my best "pretend i'm enjoying this formal event" smile
mom insisted i learn how
i'm bad at it
solgar told the tale of our deeds but with less accuracy as he went on and at first we thought he was a little mistaken but it became clear the distortions were intentional and he used mind magic to make everyone want to believe lies
we took off our pins and moved to leave the stage in disgust but solgar moved right along to the next part of the ceremony
the doors opened and it felt like the fear of an oncoming storm
a tempest clad in polished flametouched iron
arclight
as he walked to the stage he and solgar watched each other like predators ready to attack each other
arclight spoke with his own crowd-swaying magic but relic interrupted to tell everyone what he was really all about so of course that's when the fighting started
as if to prove the point that he wasn't all he seemed to be he called to "the nothing" and the stage burst into black flame!
it's not the first time i've had to fight past the smell of my own scorched fur
medya and meledri coaxed the crowd out of the building while we coaxed the guards out of the fight
we took down arclight by which i mean relic used a water-tentacle magic attack to literally pull his head off
it's only slightly less stomach-turning to see this happen to forged than to grown folks and i'm sure i'll be able to stop imagining the "cost of repairs" version of that scene within the next few days
but as ponies say "what's another head in the saddlebag?"
. . .
that idiom refers to a fable about a pony overburdened with cabbages but having written it in commonscript i now understand the others' concerned reactions when i said it
here they call a single grown bud of cabbage a "head" so that probably sounded more grim than intended
i'll explain to the others tomorrow
anyhow relic extracted arclight's "irian quartz" core and after a quick round of renew spells we decided to leave thaliost before anything more could surprise us
we teleported to wroat to meet with gerthi lanarak so zer' could give her the alta sphere from the temple in dar san
it turns out another of those towers is going up in wroat so i expect we'll be coming back sometime soon
also gerthi hasn't heard from rakela lately so that's a little concerning
with that news we needed something to lift our spirits so while us lunch-eaters ate lunch the forged visited "parliament hall" to learn about breland's system of democracy
after lunch we all went to see the enduring collection which is a very nice gallery but there's a problem with their display of chromatic's work and i'm unhappy
they hung the painted pieces well enough but not the repair tickets that go with – in fact they threw those out with the packing material
so some of the work is destroyed along with the whole of its statement
chromatic will visit the h&h tomorrow to look at our windowpapers of the display
she'll be unhappy also