Runesight

27 - Complaints

Nightwind tavern was silent for the first time that I could remember.

Even through the succession war, Sen had kept the place open. He'd worked tirelessly to bring even an ounce of joy to the people who had been falling into depression. The recruiters tried to take him a million times to fight for a prince just like all the other war-aged men, but in an act of defiance, he'd poisoned himself with silvi.

Sen's affinities burned themselves out and left him permanently crippled. But the people loved him even more. He was the most hardy man I knew, so whatever had happened to emergency close down Nightwind for a day had to have been nothing short of a complete and utter disaster. Everyone else seemed to agree with me. Sen took breaks sometimes, but those were always advertised days in advance.

Jiuhen peeked through the dark window, complaining again how he'd left his coat inside last night. There wasn't even much of a chill yet so I was clueless as to why he'd even had it.

I folded my arms and glanced at Hivren, who seemed the least angry about this out of everyone, all he wanted to talk about again was the Hero, and he could do that anywhere, really. Thankfully though, he seemed to have gotten over the idea of praising her name, I didn't deserve it and I doubted I would ever deserve it.

"Did you guys hear that Foralen is visiting a bunch of the Nobles?"

Oh yeah, I hoped my clone didn't make any important enemies tonight...I might want to go to those myself just to be sure, I mean...Geneseri makes a flawless copy of a person so she probably couldn't do any worse than me, but it still felt weird.

I shrugged in response to Hivren, "Nobles are annoying."

Hivren raised an eyebrow, "In Aubinere I'm technically a noble."

"You're just proving my point for me."

Hivren sighed, "Well the hero is making important connections now. She was never a part of Noble society before the war but now that she's back she'll need allies."

We moved off as a group to Alsen's place, not as fun to be as Nightwind, but probably a whole lot safer than the shadier taverns, "I don't give a crap about the hero."

"Yes, I know," Hivren paused and spoke quieter, "And I do agree that she's a lot less...impressive, than I was envisioning."

That struck me a lot deeper than his praises had. I raised an eyebrow at him, "In what ways?" Sparks yes, I was ready for this to be an 'everyone bash on the Hero' session.

Hivren sighed, "She's inconsiderate, she doesn't seem to know how to act in public, and she's constantly making a fool of herself."

I nodded slowly.

Jiuhen perked up, "I don't like how she's constantly using dimensionalism, as if she's rubbing in our faces how much cooler than us she is."

Hivren winced. What did it say about me that someone else cared more about me being criticized than I did? Givei wasn't about to be left out though, "I don't like her, She's just offputting to me."

They all seemed to be waiting for me to say something, the silence almost had a weight to it. "She's spontaneous," I started quietly. "She doesn't seem to think things through, but her actions still affect the whole city. She's selfish and seems to only do things for her own benefit."

They kept going on and on. And on.

We opened the door to the Lazy Dryad but the criticism didn't stop, Illila was there and she joined in. At first it felt like a weight was being lifted off my shoulders. It felt like finally I could see the things I was doing wrong.