Now that I thought about it, I didn’t see any guards with levels like these gals during the attack, only those with two question marks, not counting the healers in the infirmary. So the question was, where were those with one question mark or Guards like Vara and Elira.
“Wait,” Vara said, her mouth full of food, looking at me in surprise. “Didn’t you happen to have wings?”
“She did,” Elira nodded thoughtfully and looked at me, searching for them.
I didn’t try to hide my injuries or what happened to me. If they rose from the table, they would see the right wing’s stump, but because they were sitting, it was hidden from their view.
“I lost them last night,” I told them, standing up, showing them my back, and gritting my teeth at the pain these movements had caused me.
Vara grimaced in disgust, “Nasty,”
“You’re still healing,” Elira remarked, grinning. “Nice regeneration.”
Her mindfulness startled me. Only from what she saw was she able to conclude that the healers deliberately did not heal my wounds, that my body was rapidly regenerating. The fact that I sat down immediately after her remark and was silent, unaware of what to say, was almost like a confession.
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to pry,” Elira tried to reassure me when she saw how nervous I was.
I smiled in relief, “Thanks.”
“How did that happen to you? After that boring night I had, I’d like to hear something interesting, exciting,” Vara said with sparks of excitement in her eyes.
I had no idea what night she had, but my night was not boring, although I would not use the word exciting as its description either. It was a terrible night.
I hesitated, unaware of what I could say and not, “I lost my wings in the attack on the barracks.”
“That’s it?!” Vara frowned. “More details, please!”
“I don’t know if I can tell you,” I said honestly, looking at both of them. “I don’t want to get into any more trouble because of that, nor do I know if I can tell you about the agent.”
Elira sighed, “It’s a shame when I saw you here, I thought you joined the Castiana City Guards, that the Imperial Agent and Rayden were investigating your background before you joined. I guess I was wrong.”
“Do imperial agents verify the background of anyone who wants to join the city guards?” I asked in disbelief.
“No,” Elira shook her head and shrugged. “I just thought because you were a slave in Arda, they needed you to check your background more thoroughly.”
“Well, I hate to disappoint, but I’m not joining you. I don’t think they’ll let me become the city guard, anyway,” I said, finally taking a bite of my chilling breakfast.
“She hasn’t even reached her evolution yet. Why would they let her join us?!” Vara objected, her mouth full.
“True,” she nodded and smiled slightly, “Maybe later, then.”
Saying nothing, I nodded. It would be foolish of me to say that I will never join the city guards as I had no idea where fate would eventually take me.
For a moment, I thought I’d finally have some time to eat my breakfast in peace, Vara saw it differently.
“Well, you can’t tell us about the interrogation or how you lost your wings, I understand,” Vara summed up, leaning across the table closer to me. “But I bet they didn’t forbid you to tell me what happened between you and Travis.”
Wondering if she was just curious or gossiper, I remembered my meeting with the assistant. Fortunately, I didn’t blush like him.
“Come on, I promise I won’t laugh,” she said eagerly.
Elira swallowed a bite and looked at me, “She won’t stop bothering you until you tell her!”
I could just get up and leave, not tell them anything, but I didn’t want to be rude. On the contrary, this was an opportunity to make friends, even though it was quite an embarrassing moment for me in my life, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to have these two women as friends. One was too curious and talkative for my taste, the other sharp and clever.
“Will you tell me what you did last night if I tell you?” I asked her, after a moment’s thought.
Without hesitation, Vara nodded, “Sure.”
So I told them about how I first met Travis when I got to Castiana and about the incident itself when he was issuing an ID for me.
“… I didn’t realize it, but when he lifted his head from the papers on the table and looked at me, he saw everything …” I finished the story expecting laughter.
Elira hid her grin behind her hand, slightly red in her face; Vara was confused.
“What did he see?” she asked, still not understanding.
Thinking about how to explain it to her, I felt my heartbeat quicken.
“I had only a piece of rag around my waist. You could say a short skirt, no underwear, and outstretched legs …” I said, not finishing the description of sitting astride a chair that didn’t have a full backrest because Vara realized that Travis saw my groin and laughed.
“Hey, you promised not to laugh!” I objected, angry at her.
She raised her hand to stop my anger, but she couldn’t stop laughing, which caught the attention of others in the canteen.
Wiping the tears from her eyes, she looked at me, “Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. Who would have thought that Travis would be so innocent.”
I didn’t answer her, I only met the man a few times, and I barely spoke to him each time. It would not be right of me to judge his character, nor did I want to, as slandering someone behind his back rubbed me the wrong way.
“Keep it to yourself, please,” I asked them, but as I said that, I realized my mistake. People had skills here, which I kept forgetting, even though I spoke quietly, if there was someone in the canteen with a hearing like mine, listening to our conversation would be a trifle for him.
“It’s funny, a little awkward, but I see no reason to tell others,” Elira assured me, so I looked pleadingly at Vara.
She shook her head, “No, you can’t ask that of me! Do you know how much I could tease Travis with this?”
“Yeah, I know, that’s why I’m asking you,” I insisted.
She growled in frustration, “Am I the only one who thinks Travis deserves a little teasing?”
“Don’t look at me, Vara. I have no problem with him. He’s shy, so what?” Elira glossed over my embarrassing moment with a shrug and a faint smile. I couldn’t help but notice that her cheeks were still slightly red.
Vara frowned at her, “You’re no fun!”
Since her friend just shrugged, she looked at me defeated, “Okay, I promise.”
But then she grinned, “You must have made quite an impression on him, he blushed as soon as he saw you. He remembered you!”
Obviously, when she couldn’t tease Travis, she decided to tease me. I couldn’t say that I liked where this was going, what she was suggesting, what she was making me think about.
“Ha,” she pointed at me triumphantly as I blushed, “I see you know what I mean. Maybe he was thinking of you when he was jerking off.”
“Vara!” Elira raised her voice.
“What?! Everyone does it. Whoever says no, is lying!” Vara claimed, “I jill-off at least once a day. Sometimes I find a guy to help me with that.”
Her confession made me blush even more, thinking about the last time I touched myself, which was when I was on Earth, I barely remember it.
It’s been a long time. I sighed internally.
“We’ve been together all day yesterday, from morning until now. When did you find time to w***?” Elira wondered.
Vara sighed, “I didn’t, you don’t have to remind me that. It was a very long, boring, and frustrating day.”
This was a chance to avoid a debate about my non-existent sex life, so I took it.
“It’s your turn. I told you what happened between Travis and me. Now I’d like to hear why I didn’t see you in the barracks at night!” I asked, hoping they wouldn’t want to avoid the question.
Vara looked at me, frowning, she didn’t like the change of subject, but then shook her head and leaned back in her chair, “Do you really want to hear it? Because we missed all the fun you had here! “
I nodded, perhaps too eagerly, “I do.”
“Okay. Well, it started in the morning. As you know, we were ordered to look for you, and we found you,” Vara began.
“We?” Elira asked her, not believing what she was hearing. “I did most of the work!”
“We, as a team,” she explained, not bothered by her remark. “blah blah blah skipping forward, at the end of the shift, I was already looking forward to having a beer at Drunken Filly when the Captain showed up …”
Captain Rayden ordered everyone to remain on duty, those with a level of less than 200, with exceptions, such as healers, were sent to the guardhouses in Castiana and to the city walls, and ordered to prevent panic, riots, keep order and defend civilians if necessary. Only the strongest guards remained in the barracks.
I didn’t understand how this escaped Morton or Denholm. When Morton interrogated me, there were, let’s say, standard guards in the barracks, like the two before me. I would understand that Morton was there as Hal to see the situation inside the barracks, among other things, but they must have noticed that after that incident, the strength of the guards changed dramatically. They had to have someone watching the barracks, didn’t they?
“… so I sat on my ass, bored as f***, then boom!!! I almost fell off my chair when the first explosion occurred. Like everyone else, I ran out of the guardhouse to see what had happened when the entire upper floor of the barracks office building exploded. I’ve almost pissed my pants. Since then, we have been in the city trying to calm the citizens, keep them off the streets. That’s all. As I said, all the fun took place here.” Vara finished, her dissatisfaction evident in her tone of voice.
I didn’t learn much from her, but at least I had time to finish my breakfast while listening to her.
“What would I give for being here, seeing the explosion up close!” Vara growled.
I cocked my head to the side, marveling at her contradiction, “Didn’t you say you almost pissed yourself when the barracks exploded?”
“Korra is right!” Elira laughed at her, “What would you do if you were really here? S*** your pants?”
“At least I wouldn’t be bored,” Vara said, crossing her arms over her chest.
She was right about that, if she were in the barracks she wouldn’t be bored, but also if she encountered someone like Denholm, she could easily lose her life. After all, she was just [Guardswoman: lvl 127].
She leaned over to me, “You were here, what was the explosion up close like?”
“I …” I hesitated, trying to remember the explosion of the office building where Captain Rayden was fighting. “… I was sleeping in the infirmary at the time, I think the explosion woke me up, so I have nothing to tell you, I didn’t see it,”
Vara sighed in disappointment, but Elira surprised me with her question,
“One of the infirmary rooms exploded. Didn’t you happen to be there?” she asked, nodding at my wings.
Vara pricked up her ears again, but I hesitated to answer, unaware of what I could tell them and what I couldn’t. After a moment’s thought, I came to the conclusion that the missing wings would be immediately noticed by anyone who knew about them, and there was no point in hiding how it happened. I just didn’t have to tell the whole truth.
I nodded, “I lost my right one during that explosion, my left was ripped out of my back by one of the attackers.”
“Wow, you met them,” Vara said enthusiastically, wanting to know more. “Did you kill any? Were they strong? I heard even the A-Team had trouble dealing with them.”
“A-Team?” I smiled at the name, which reminded me of an old show, wondering what kind of team it was.
“That’s how some people,” Elira, who began to explain, nodded at her friend. “…call master guards. These guys and gals all have a level of two hundred or more. You won’t see them patrol the city because they train in the Labyrinth most of the time. The Captain calls them when it’s really something serious.”
Thinking the name A-Team has suited them, I nodded, “They were strong.”
“So you saw them fight. I envy you,” Vara frowned, scratching her head in frustration.
“If it’s true what I heard happened, quite soon we might visit the Labyrinth more than once every fortnight,” said Elira to cheer up her friend.
Vara and I looked at her, not understanding what she meant. My guess was that this incident would make their training stricter, if so, I didn’t envy them.
Elira shook her head in disbelief at her friend’s ignorance, “Captain Rayden has been asking the city lord for years for more funding for the city guards, asked him to restore and strengthen the city defense enchantments, especially against mind magic, but he ignored her. He argued that it was not necessary, that Castiana was not a border town. City guards receive less and less funding every year, the enchantments are neglected, some don’t even work anymore. I think she will have the upper hand now …”
Until now, I had no idea Castiana had a Lord, but my opinion of him after what I had just heard was not very good. Judging by the way she talked about him, it was not just some title he received after the election, but the real title of Lord. He was a nobleman whom the emperor had entrusted with the rule of the city, I thought, at least. I could be wrong, after all, I knew almost nothing about the political structure of the empire, only that Sahal had an emperor, Castian had a lord, and the City Hall.
I know it didn’t excuse my ignorance, but I have never liked politics, and in my opinion, politicians, with a few exceptions, were useless people, not interested in people but power.
I thought about the consequences of the night attack that Elira had mentioned when the man standing in the canteen door shouted at the room, “Is Korra Grey here?!”
I flinched, covering my ears in case he screamed so loudly again. Fearing that I was in trouble for some reason unknown to me, I hesitated and did not speak right after he mentioned my name.
But I wasn’t the only one who knew of my presence in the canteen, Vara, sitting across from me, raised her hand, shouting, “Hey, here! What do you need her for?”
The man didn’t answer her, walked over to our table, and looked at me, “Are you Korra Grey?”
“Yes,” I replied, a little taken aback.
“Hey, you didn’t answer me, asshole,” Vara growled.
Guardsman looked at her wearily, but he answered her with sarcasm, “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings, Vara.”
“F*** you, Aron,” she said, giving him the middle finger.
The familiar gesture pleasantly surprised me, forcing me to wonder if people from Earth had really visited Eleaden before me or if it was just a coincidence that here and there, I came across things similar to those on Earth, like katana or this gesture. What if the humans themselves were not the original inhabitants of Eleaden, but came hundreds of years ago from the same place as me? Unfortunately, this was not a question I could answer, not right now.
“It’s always a pleasure to meet you,” he shook his head and looked at me. “Captain Rayden wants to talk to you, Grey.”
“Oh, now?” I asked, realizing immediately that it was a stupid question, why else he would be here.
Guardsman nodded, “Now!”
“Just give me a second, I’ll take the tray away… tss,” I hissed at the pain caused by my rapid rise.
While I was sitting, I completely forgot about my injury, not feeling pain, but the wound was still there, regenerating.
“Korra, wait!” Elira stopped me, her hand resting on my tray. “I’ll take it away, just go with Aron. It’ll be better if you don’t keep them waiting!”
To tell you the truth, I was afraid of the meeting. At this point, I’d rather clean the toilets than meet Rayden and who knows who else. The tray was actually just an excuse to postpone the meeting.
But I couldn’t be angry with Elira, she meant well.
“Thanks,” I appreciated her, and she nodded. Before I left the table, I smiled at them both. “Till next time, then …!”
Unaware of when the next time will be, if I ever meet them again, I followed the guardsman. As I walked through the corridors of the barracks, I felt like a convict going to execution, all I needed was prison uniforms and handcuffs. I didn’t pay much attention to where we were going, thinking about the meeting, when I bumped into the guardsman who stopped in front of me.
Rubbing my nose, I apologized, “Sorry,”
He didn’t respond, knocking on the door in front of which he stopped. They opened almost immediately, and Travis peered down the hall.
“Great, just in time,” he told the guardsman when he saw me, beckoning me to go inside, “Come in!”
When I saw Travis, I felt guilty for what I had said to the gals in the canteen and hoped he would not hate me for it later.
