The Rift in the Domain- The Auranos Stories Book 2

Chapter 13 - Memo

Certainly we were making progress- by the time we were done in Cavebrook, things would never be the same again. I could have told you this before we even left- the morning of our last day there, the bellhop told me that people had been trying to get into the hotel all night, to talk to us, to threaten us... even a few police officers who hadn't given up on arresting us. They were still there, at the break of dawn!

Ha! Yraak laughed as I leaned out my window at a uniformed man below. Their spirits are hardly even average in power. And there are only two of them... We'll take care of this, Riser.

"'Ey!" the man shouted, pointing up. "There she is!"

Crazed fans and foes alike suddenly flooded out of the hotel lobby and joined the officer on the street, shouting at me from below.

"Krikey," I muttered, withdrawing into my room. "They're all riled up now."

Eh... wasn't that the point? Jalakoro laughed. To rile them up?

"Rile them up- yes, but not at-" I checked the clock "-seven in the morning, ha-ha. Hopefully they'll still be energetic for the rally."

But it's moot anyway. I don't think you'll need to worry, Yraak said kindly. The last day in Cavebrook, our group had decided, we would hold a single, concentrated demonstration in the center of town, just outside the main hall. We'd be packed and ready to leave town, because word was getting around that Shadow's own forces would be arriving here soon. If they showed up during the rally, we could disappear as fast as we needed to. That was a worst-case scenario, though, because it would mean the end of our campaign in Cavebrook. Who'd follow us after nearly getting captured? Who would even be left un-arrested? This was treason, after all.

On accident, we were making a social battleground of Cavebrook. The townsfolk had been making preparations of their own, treason or not. Once word got out that this was our last day, the town instantly split into three groups.

A portion of the town supported us. There was a surprising number- nearly a third of the town wanted to come along to betray their king, by what we could tell. We'd gotten the word out to them to come to the rally with their things packed, if they really wanted to rebel. I had seen several houses stripped of their belongings, with people gathering bags outside, piling up supplies on horses and pawning off whatever was left.

Rationally, there would be a group staunchly opposing us- in this case, it was mostly the wealthy and influential members of the town. This was a very small portion of Cavebrookians. In fact, it was basically just the top five or six families and the officials they had bribed. These people were still trying to get my group arrested, despite us having the strongest spirits in Lagokia on our side.

Don't think I don't know what you're about to ask. The answer is yes. Yes- this group includes the raving lunatic Zina almost punched at the bonfire.

So that left the majority of the population- the indecisive. The rest of Cavebrook seemed very, very uneasy about the whole situation. From what Zina heard in her wanderings, this portion of residents called both of the other sides of the conflict 'radical', but couldn't pick a stance themselves. Hopefully we would get a few of these people to join our cause before we left.

Through all of this, everyone wanted to meet the six of us. To fight, to encourage, to threaten or to question, people started following us everywhere by the fourth day. We were essentially celebrities! The spirits had been instrumental to this- they bullied the two Cavebrook spirits and kept the police from ever laying hands on us. There were some close calls, mind you. To keep the police away they had to use possession, and that takes a lot of energy. They couldn't keep it up for more than a minute or two. But overall, the fact that we had some seriously powerful spirits on our side- and weren't using their power to hurt people- gave us a level of credibility that I couldn't have imagined.