TBATE - What if Tessia was the legacy ? - The legacy of it all

Don't you require assistance?

{Tessia Eralith}

-Let her through; she is with me." Gently informed the Elven lance as she walked up to me and the officer in charge of the portals with a soft and gracious smile.

-Alea?" I asked with slight surprise, hiding my real feelings of pure and utter dumbfoundedness at her sudden arrival.

Jerking her head to the side, I saw the officer's stern and unflinching face turn pale as her eyes grew wide, realizing who she was standing in front of. Bowing all the way down, so much so that it looked like she might hit the ground, the poor guard shouted: "I apologize for my rudeness, Countess Triscan; I never meant to disturb you."

Chuckling slightly at the officer, Alea moved her hand in front of her smile to hide her amusement.

-There is no need to be so formal with me, Chayan; we have been friends since the third year of military school." She commented with grace in a friendly tone.

-I could never be so disrespectful as to not refer to and act in accordance with your title." Explained the woman who was still bowing down in an only slightly less panicked voice.

-I think that it would only be that disrespectful." Answered the lance as she moved her hand slightly forward before putting her thumb and index finger in a pincer-like shape with only a very small gap between the two.

Glaring up to Alea, the officer couldn't help but break a nervous smile as she slowly rose back up while scratching the back of her head.

-Very well, a-Alea..." She said with obvious discomfort as she let out a stressed-out laugh.

-Good." Answered the lance, apparently oblivious to the awkwardness of the situation, before turning to me with a proud smile. "Then, how about we get going?" She rhetorically asked me with a friendly tone.

Nodding along, the two of us walked further down the alleyway toward the set of active portals, past a couple of carriages, merchants, and other Elven officials or nobles who were among the last to leave Xyrus City.

Arriving at the portal, the two of us waited for a last group of elves to step out before stepping in ourselves.

Feeling the sudden but expected dizzying effect of the teleportation portal, it only took a few seconds before I appeared on the other side, on the large teleportation platform of the floating city.

Taking a few more steps as I took a look around, Xyrus's main teleportation area was quite simple, bare-bones even, with only a somewhat decorated stone flooring extending for about five hundred meters on each side to form a square.

This lack of grandeur and decoration could probably be attributed to the constant flow of goods and people in, out, and around the area. Which wasn't helped by the fact that the structure was more or less at the center of the city.

I remember Grandma Cynthia telling me about the logistical nightmare that it represented. Mostly because the gates had seemingly been placed at random, almost like the people who had made them had done so last minute without considering how or what their purpose should be.

This, and the fact that most of the gates lead to seemingly random locations across the continent, with only a few "well-placed" ones linking to pre-existing infrastructure, is a big talking point for historians.

Some argue that the teleportation gates are a sign that the ancient mages had to suddenly flee their cities and travel as far as they could to avoid the danger there, insinuating that they disappeared in a catastrophic event.

Others say that the placement of those portals isn't random or erratic at all, speculating that the ancient mages simply had a much better infrastructure that allowed for those gates to be used in a logical day-to-day manner. Their conclusion is based on the fact that even hundreds of years after their construction, the gates still operate perfectly fine, meaning that they had been built with the intent of being resilient to time, which someone in a hurry wouldn't have cared for.