Discordant Note: Crescendo | TBATE

Chapter 164: Training for War

Toren Daen

Even after the normally wholesome experience of playing my music, I left Central Academy feeling deeply unsure.

After the concert, I maneuvered through the political webs and envoys sent forward to form a connection or entice some sort of deal from me. Aurora remained mostly silent, only providing nudges and tips when it was absolutely necessary. My bond despised this city even more than I did.

But above even that, she feared Agrona sensing me once more. So she stayed quiet, dreadfully aware that she could draw the High Sovereign's attention once more.

Lusul and his friends were there to watch me go, smiling and nodding in an appreciative way. Varsa waved with a slight smile, and Adestine blushed deeply when I focused on her.

But the sight of these happy youths, so ready to go to war and condemn the people of Dicathen, made a knot of acid seep in my throat.

When Arthur masqueraded as a professor on this continent, he had found his students to be hesitant and angry about the war. Their lives were nothing in the endless meat grinder Agrona created, and after Aldir singlehandedly erased the surface of an entire country, they rightfully questioned what the point of it all was.

These students were not the same. All their lives, they'd been told they were greater than others because of their asuran lineage. That the other continent was a place of savages and lessers who hadn't been blessed with Agrona's grace and favor.

I didn't blame Lusul, Adestine, and Varsa for their discrimination. They had never been told otherwise; never been given a chance to think or see the consequences of their actions. Hell, even my brother Norgan and I thought ourselves beyond the Dicathians. It was only when my soul merged with my Earthen reflection that my perspective had changed.

I blamed Agrona. He'd fostered a strange duality in the people of Alacrya: one of simultaneous groveling and pride. They were lesser than their gods, but greater than the other peoples of the world.

My feet felt heavy as they plodded along the streets of Cardigan, my direction vaguely winding toward the teleportation gates at the center. I had a meeting in Aedelgard, after all.

As I walked, the reactions of those who saw me were mixed. One man bowed stiffly as if I were a highblood of the greatest order. Another flared his mana in challenge, meeting my eyes. And another–one who bore a necklace imbibed with the glyphs of the Doctrination–sneered at me with outright hate.

Lusul might not have flattered me from the bottom of his heart, but the words he spoke upon our first meeting were true. I'd disrupted Alacrya's balance of political power deeply, and the current position of the Doctrination as an institution was deeply uncertain. There were rumors of the High Sovereign's minions visiting churches and confiscating both wealth and property from the leading vicars. And considering Scythe Seris had not faced public repercussions from Agrona for her supposedly blatant actions against His Voice, the Alacryan people were left wondering if the leader of the Vritra clan approved of Varadoth's execution.

I wondered, when it was all over, what the faces of these people would display when they saw me.

"Your face is sour as an entmoor's prime berry," a cool, smooth voice said. "I find myself wondering what has you so contemplative, Lord Daen."

I tilted my head to the side, noting the sudden appearance of a familiar woman walking beside me.

Common perception stated that Scythe Seris did not make social visits. Common perception was wrong. The pearlescent woman simply never allowed those she visited to divine her true identity.