The forgotten World

41. The A-Maze-ing Lunch

*editor’s note: sorry about the chapter title, it was too good to pass up the play on words*

We figured Ral had had some kind of food while he was in here and so we went looking for somewhere to buy lunch. We saw a sigh that people were walking though and discovered it was solid for us, meaning it affected the Maze and we followed the arrow pointing in the direction of food. As we got closer we saw the court yard with the food shops around it and as we entered the area we both felt our magic dampen and I looked at Vadima who nodded in response to my silent question. I tried to summon a flame in my hand but nothing happened “interesting” I noted. We could see other competitors sitting around talking eating. The maze seemed a very relaxed place in here. I counted six other people out of the eleven in total that could be in the maze in this food area. The other three people were either in the maze itself or in the real world. As I looked around I did not see Yeva so I figured she was working on making progress in the maze.

We had soon enough found a seat when someone came over with a menu. “The menu has everything this plaza can offer in the way of food and drink” the waiter said. I looked at my menu while Vadima looked at hers. “I’ll have a Seafood Platter and a nice wine to go with it” Vadima said. The waiter looked at me after writing down Vadima’s order and I sighed “I’m going to have something a bit simpler; Pasta of the Day and a bottle of lemonade. I said. While we was writing that down Cov materialized in the third seat. And after looking at the menu for the same amount of time as I had already knew what she wanted. “And I’ll have a quiche and an extra wine glass to share Vadima’s Wine” Cov said. The waiter jumped when Cov spoke but didn’t ask where she came from and took the order then walked off. “Very funny” I directed at Cov. “Very ordinary” Vadima Directed at me. “Very odd” Cov added. “Huh?” both Vadima and I said as we looked at her. “My Magic is also dampened here, never felt that before” Cov answered. “How does your magic work anyway? And what’s an aspect of the whatever?” I asked. “I can change aspects once every twenty-four hours. You have seen me use aspect of the Kraken in that encounter with Leon and aspect of the Ghost with that vampire where I’m there and not there at the same time, aspect of the ghost is a powerful haze with an incredible weakness, even though every other aspect can be turned on or off at will, with the limitation of only using one each day, aspect of the ghost only lasts thirty minutes to two hours depending on the strength of the haze, although strength is rather irrelevant for us, our will is more or less what powers our aspects as we don’t have any actual muscle unless in a form like I am now.” Cov answered. “And what’s your rank amongst other haze?” Vadima asked. “Like in the real world each organization has a power tree, from boss down as you know; in the department I come from I’m one of the higher ups” Cov answered. We saw the waiter approaching with the meals so we waited till he had left and we resumed talking. “Department? Like the entire haze world is one big company?” I asked as we all started eating. “For lack of a better word; yes, our world is one big company with I don’t know how many departments, I don’t think any of us actually know how many there is” Cov answered. “And what’s your department?” Vadima Asked while eating. “Department of investigation” Cov answered. “Investigation? Investigating what?” Vadima asked. “Anything and everything that is undiscovered to the haze, when Ian and I bound ourselves to each other it changed part of my job” Cov started. “Ian? Who’s Ian?” Vadima asked. “That’s my real name, the name I picked when I discovered this world” I answered.  “Continuing on, my original job was to pick a human from birth and observe him or her, now it’s been expending to understand emotion, we know how to trigger emotions in people but we have never had emotions of our own. Most haze’s don’t give up immortality like I have to bond with someone, we have lived since before the dawn of time and we discovered that being bound to someone causes you to have the same life span of that person. So when we discovered that every haze stopped bonding with people. Everyone one who has ever done anything world changing example Jesus, Hitler, Hercules, the Nehalem, Egyptian pharaohs or any other famous figure in history has had help from a haze in one way or another, most common was simple communication only a few of them bonded, I know Hercules and Jesus had a bonded haze. Every Egyptian pharaoh had communication with a haze, no recording bonding with any of them, which might have been why there quest for immortality” Cov said. “Information overload” I said. “Yah, that’s a lot to take in” Vadima agreed. “For us its general knowledge” Cov said. We finished the rest of the meal in silence and I paid the waiter after silently cursing the price of the wine.