The central plaza of the Goddes's Garden was crowded, even given the limited population of nobles on Eli-Ray's upper city, since even the less important ones brought numerous servants and personal guards with them. Half of the square was decorated by 10 meters tall statues of previous emperors facing, or one might say, judging everyones present.
Plaza's very center was clozed off by soldiers, and 30 mages were setting a summoning circle. Behind it, in front of the Imperial Palace, in the center between the statues, a temporary floating structure was built to accommodate Julius's throne.
Small machines, looking like orbs made of constantly pulsating and rotating golden circles, were floating all around the event venue and transmitting everything towards the lower cities for the people to see.
Pubblick hero summoning wasn't common, and even though people understood that this was a political statement from the Human Empire, it didn't reduce in the slightest the excitement everyone felt.
Hero summoning represented change, movement, and reshuffling, in some capacity, of the whole world. New opportunities would emerge like mushrooms after a warm rain.
About two and a half weeks ago, an ultimately failed summoning created a general tension among the population, and some external enemies started to move in the shadows, so the public summoning was timely.
Zack appeared behind the throne. - "My Lord, everything is ready. My mages are waiting for your lead." - Julius nodded and stood up. With a single leap, he landed in front of the summoning circle.
He clasped his hands in a praying stance. Everybody, from nobles to commoners, with only the exception of the soldiers, did the same. - "Oh, Goddess, this humble soul begs for blessing."- A halo of bright light energy surrounded him. Similar scenes appeared above every city. Everyone with even a tinge of light energy had a warm glow appear around them.
"Oh Goddess, please bless your loyal servants with a sword that can tear the heresy and darkness. With a shield that can protect the innocents. With a beacon for humanity to follow." -The Emperor's voice wasn't loud, but the machines amplified it for everybody to hear and pray along. - "OH GODDES, BLESS US WITH A HERO OF LIGHT!"
Julius amplified the last sentence himself and poured a massive amount of magical energy into the circle.
Beads of sweat began rolling down the mages' foreheads while golden symbols materialized in the air around them.
*HMMMMMMMMMMMM* - Air vibrated as a pillar of light pierced the clouds and slammed into the summoning circle, knocking the wizards back. The emperor didn't move. Everyone held their breath, having only one question in their minds.
[Did the ritual succeed?]
{...}
Chearing reached even the deepest part of the slums. Miasma wasn't as useful against the sounds as it was at corroding brains.
"What the hell, he even has a golden armor!" - Eliot hit a heavily modified imperial machine for transmissions. - "Damn interfearences."
"Hei, back to work." - Vince's stern voice called the boy. - "You still have more than a hundred mutated rats to dissect."
"Why am I even still doing it?
Vince emerged from the library and took the transmitter from Eliot. - "Oh, Emperor has found a nice hero..." - And put it away after a glance at the projection. - "Again, you are doing this to become more familiar with the tools and stop complaining. For your age, you are surprisingly desensitized to blood and gore; otherwise, the rats to dissect and recycle would be in the thousands rather than the meager hundreds.
Eliot could only shut up about this matter. - "Eh, ok. By the way, what do you mean by 'Emperor has found a hero'? Why even bother to summon me in the first place?"
"The summoning ritual requires a lot of energy, and it's impossible to fake or hide one." - He went to the storage room and returned with two boxes. - "These are to preserve the eggs," - He half-explained.
However, Eliot was more curious about the former topic. - "So they had to summon something in any case?
"Yes, and whoever they summoned would be deemed as a spy or heretic anyway. Go fetch my crystal cutter. It's in my desk, second drawer on the left, green-ish box."
[So, my summoning was something like a decoy...] - Thought the boy on his way. He found the tool needed and, still in thought, returned.
"Don't sweat it. The emperor just wanted to show a weakness, a pretty obvious one, if you ask me, and take note of every force stupid enough to make a move."
He put on his work glasses. Eliot knew that it was a very precious high-presision tool.'There are less than 7 tools similar to this one left in Crossroad World.' Said Vince slapping Eliot's hand away when he wanted to touch them.
"And now, with a *reeeeeeaaaal* Hero present, Julius can just swipe all these low-hanging fruits for some popularity points for himself and his new shiny tool."
Even though his own situation wasn't all that good, and in the empire, he was only a borderline human being, Vince's words cheered him up a bit.
[At least I don't need to pretend to be a hero or whatsoever...]
"Now, go wash your hands, then wash them again with a black liquid under the sink and bring black gloves. At least 20 pairs." - Instructed Vince. - Wait, actually bring the whole bottle with the liquid and a basin here."
When Eliot brought everything, Vince added. - "We have a customer today. She has a nasty temper, so don't even breathe too much. Less communication is the key to communicating with her peacefully."
For the last two weeks, there were no customers who actually came down to the Plague's Kitchen, but Vincent frequently ventured outside, always returning with some corpses or just unidentifiable blobs of flesh.
*TOCK, TOCK* Vince stood up and went to open the door. Second later Eliot heared two voices. One, surprisingly, belonged to a woman. -"...and I thought that they finally captured you for heresy when I smelled someone new here, hahahaha."
It was a woman, probably around twenty, twenty-five years old, but Eliot wasn't sure [Vince is apparently 117 years old.]
Fair skin, dark-brown hair covered by a greyish hood. Eyes were covered by a bandage but not even for a second Eliot thought that she couldn't see him. He felt a strange tingling spreading through his body. Like goosebumps but considerably more uncomfortable.
"Don't scare my assistant, Huntress." - And the sensation disappeared. - "Sure, sure."
Suddenly, she vanished.
"AH!" - Eliot fell on the ground when her face reappeared a few centemeters from his own. - "You smell strange, Boy." - She commented and turned to Vince. -"Where did you find him?"
"In the pile." - The Woman's face slightly paled and was immediately colored with a tinge of disgust. Then, she slowly smelled the air again. - "Wait, is he a summo..."
"Just take out the corpse already. Time is money."
The Huntress smirked. - "Yeah, money and trouble for the church when you sell this corpse to Blacwick."
Vince shrugled his shoulders.
She took out a small box and passed it with a key to Vince. On top of it, there was a small triangular hole. He inserted the key, and his body froze.
The huntress waited patiently. - "Even he will be surprised." - Then, noticing Eliot's puzzled gaze, she added. - "That's a storage box, StB for short. Now you see a small box, but the space inside is much bigger."
The boy immediately had a question. -"What about the weight of the things inside?" The woman was surprised for a second by a valid question. - "Different StBs have different volume and weight reduction. As you can guess, the value of the box is directly propotional to these two traits."
"But what happened to Vince?" - He asked.
"He injected some of his mag.en into the key to see what was stored inside.
"Magen?"
The woman explained. - "Magical energy, 'magen' for simplicity, written with a dot between 'mag' and 'en'."
The after a pause she added. - "So you are really the guy from that failed summon two weeks ago? No *maaaagic* in your home-world, eh?" - She teased him a bit. - "Maybe I should report to the guards that you are alive? What do you think, little heretic?" - She drew closer to him and placed her index on his forehead.
Eliot calmly moved her hand away. - "No, thanks." - Vince told him that situations like these could happen, but whoever was interacting with people from Plague's Kitchen was also considered criminal and apprehended immediately.
"You are no fun." - Said the Huntress when Vince's body twitched and his eyes became lucid again. He looked at her, his expression tense.
"You are a crazy woman." - She smiled.
He turned to Eliot. - "We won't be working here. Follow me."