A Crumbling Society

Part 1-16

A knock on my door the next morning woke me up gently with the thought if it was real or not. I heard it again and told myself I wasn't dreaming, I reached over to the clock at it said 7:30 on it. Pushing myself up with the covers that were holding me down I realized I fell asleep naked. I found my clothes in the bathroom as the knock repeated and used a very small quick wash spell, "Adref", and proceeded with boxers and shorts. Once the knock hit a fourth time, I finally just opened it, and it was Sander standing here in a different suit than yesterday that seemed a little extra fresh. "Hi", I said with the leftover grog of not waking up fully.

"Hello sir, I just wanted to inform you of our breakfast service so that you can enjoy if you'd like."

"Thank you", I said watching his eyes find themselves in different places. I then thought about if he was looking at my body or my bruises, so I slipped on my shirt.

"You're very welcome, sir", he says and tries to speak more.

"I think I'm going to pass, not hungry and my friend and I need to get going", I had cut him off.

He popped an eye up in confusion and realization and said, "oh, well your friend is currently downstairs enjoying breakfast and had asked for me to retrieve you."

"Did she now?", I gave back in a full stern tone.

"Yes sir!", he said back.

I added a "thanks, tell her I'll be down in a minute!".

He said "Okay" and turned around to walk away smiling awkwardly. I had a second of thinking I might be the one to kill Liza for that. He turned back towards me briefly looking like he had something to say still holding the weird smile and I shut the door. I ignored every bit of whatever it was she was trying to do and he as well. Slipped my socks back on and pressed my feet into my shoes, made sure I had everything while cutting the panel off and then exited the room. The elevator ride down was about as boring as every elevator ride on the planet but once the doors opened, I could hear the murmurs of people. I took a turn and found a hallway where the noise was coming from to find a luxurious room, the sign said ballroom. There were tables everywhere and some set up in a line with food on them in a serve yourself style. Liza was sitting in a corner waving at me, which made a few people turn to see why. It kind of bothered me because I don't people. And I don't do attention so the pessimist in me started glaring unintentionally as I made my way through the crowd. Several heads whipped themselves away quickly as eye contact was made. I sat down and Liza was grinning like she knew she pissed me off, "you're not that funny", I let her know.

"Oh, come on, have a little fun, just a little", she pressed.

Keeping my face, "no, and I don't need to explain why and I'm not mad either I just, it was awkward and caught me off guard".

"I know, but that's the fun part"

"Never again", I say while laughing a little.

Liza looks at me and asks if I'm hungry, I told her I wasn't and asked her if she had already eaten. She told me she had a little bit of the eggs, and they were good. "So...", she started and finished with asking who we are supposed to go see today. I told her he goes by "Worm" and is currently helping the underground network with the black market and some shady drug smuggling. These drugs are magic drugs too, they give people a fix to boost their magic abilities times ten or fifty depending on how much you take. They're known as DST or dust is what they call it. It will kill a human in about a week with no cure since their bodies don't consist of magic genes. A mage will be on and off of it but eventually after a few years they become washed out, literally, no magic at all. "Wow", Liza threw in. It's really bad and the council was trying to do something to ban it or eradicate it. The crystal it comes from can be found almost anywhere and they're used in rituals sacred to pure magic users for world catastrophes so it would change a lot of things. The guy that came up with it died a long time ago because he used it on himself to experiment and then passed it on and well, you'd figure by now whomever has the paternal rights is a millionaire. Worm lives here in the city, and I think he could help us with at least one of his inventions or even with information. He talks to a thousand people so I figured there might be something useful to it. I'd say he's maybe fifteen minutes or thirty on foot. Liza looked at me, knowing I didn't care to keep talking about it, she asked when we head out. I told her I was going to try eating a little and got up for a minute to get food.