Maze of Moonlight by Gael Baudino (read with me TXT) 📕

flamboyant hat with a large feather protruding from one side. The back of his coat was emblazoned with the sigil of the Elta’sahn company, as were his gloves, boots, and earrings. His hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail that reached the bottom of his shoulder blades, and he had a neatly groomed goatee that surrounded a mouth which seemed to be stuck in a constant smirk. The light of his mana was like the glow of old campfire coals, a hardly flickering orange deep in his core.

To his right was a man in full battle attire, wearing beautifully crafted chainmail beneath thick pads of hide armor. While I had placed the first man around Val’s age, the armored man looked to be at least in his sixties based on the deep wrinkles creasing his face. His gear was similarly marked with the Company sigil, stamped onto the faces of his greaves, cuirass, and bracers, as well as engraved on the hilt of the two longswords he wore belted to his waist. His aura radiated a silver light that never seemed to falter or wane. He watched the crowd before him with a steely gaze, not betraying any emotions.

Compared to the first two members of the group, the woman on their left sparkled vibrantly with emerald green light against the darkness of my Detection. It was clear she was a magic user of some sort; in combination with the simple, unadorned robes and hood she wore, I guessed she was a member of the Unity Church. There were no clear signs that she was affiliated with the Company, apart from her companions, but she stuck close to the front man of the group as they moved down the stone stairs towards the podium. She appeared much younger than her two companions, most likely of an age with Lia or myself. The only other distinct feature I noticed was a baseball sized orb hidden in the sleeve of her robe, which radiated the same green mana signature as she did. That must be her casting implement. It seems the Church is proficient in storing mana inside any casting implements, not just Val’s shield.

I nudged Val and leaned in close to her ear. “Someone is taking the stage. They look like they’re some sort of important Company people.”

She nodded and took a moment to spin onto her knees, being careful not to scrape her metal armor against the stone floor and give away our position. Her head poked out slowly above the windowsill, and she took in the scene before us for the first time. The courtyard had continued to fill consistently since we arrived, and was now packed to the very edge of the stone plaza only fifteen feet away from our hiding place. After a few seconds Val shrunk back from the window with a look of shock on her face, by far the most emotive expression I had ever seen from her.

“Two of them, together...unprecedented,” she said under her breath. She blinked her eyes repeatedly in disbelief, then turned to me suddenly. “The man in the yellow coat is the Strategist, and the man armored in blue is the General. Two of the three leaders of the Company.” When I didn’t react to the revelation, she leaned in and whispered more urgently. “The last time two leaders of the Company were seen together was during the Lybesian Trade Affair, during which they destroyed over half of Lybesa’s fleet and single-handedly turned the tide of the conflict. If they are here now…”

I nodded. “It really is serious.” I peeked over the edge of the window to confirm what my Detection had shown me. “It doesn’t look like either of them is the Conduit, though. And who is that with them? It isn’t the Admiral, I take it?”

“No,” she shook her head. “I am unsure as to her identity.” I watched as the man in the golden coat climbed the wooden staircase to the stage and approached the podium, drawing a large cheer from the crowd. “Perhaps the Admiral is the Conduit. It would be sensible to leave him in the safety of the statehouse, if what you say about his importance is true.”

“Maybe,” I said, distracted. The hair on the back of my neck had stood straight up when the Strategist reached the podium, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching us. I rechecked our surroundings through Detection and found nothing out of place, but the feeling persisted. “The Strategist is about to speak,” I told Val, motioning up to the window again.

“Greetings, my friends!” The Strategist’s voice boomed over the plaza, drawing another round of cheers from the men before him. “Thank you all for gathering here tonight. I know how hard each of you has worked towards our goal, and I would never summon you away from that work unless it were important.” He spoke with a charisma and easy confidence that any cult leader would envy, and the crowd ate it up. “But tonight is a night for celebration! A time to bask in our success, and look forward at the new world that your hard work has built!”

He made a sweeping gesture back towards the statehouse. “Look! The bobbing lights may look small from here, but they signal something great.” Though it was obscured from our position and far out of range of my Detection, I knew he was pointing to the harbor that sat below the city. “The final deployments of our men have arrived. Tomorrow, we will assemble the greatest army that Kaldan has ever seen, and it will be led,” he motioned back towards the man behind him, “by the fiercest General the world has ever known!”

The man stepped forward when mentioned to wild applause; he looked entirely unamused by the situation, with his severe features accentuated by shadows of the flickering torches that lit the plaza. He drew one sword from his hip and pointed it up to