An Arcanist's Citadel 13 (Patreon)

An Arcanist’s Citadel

Chapter 13

-VB-

Despite my justified paranoia that things would get even more complicated than before, Elysium experienced close to six months of blissful peace. 

Blissful peace that my children occasionally broke with their training, not that normal people could see or hear what they did.

What I have noticed, however, were more Turians coming to visit Elysium. The chained Batarian souls made sure to let me know because the more information they told me, the less they had to suffer. Of course, cooperative souls got less spiky leashes and less pain delivered to them. I was a very fair person, after all. 

So I knew that the Turians were here.

Most of them stuck around the capital city of the planet while only a few ever ventured out. 

And the souls kept telling me that the Turians, at least these Turians, could see them.

Which was interesting. 

They were the second group after the Catholic Inquisitors who could see the souls, and I really wanted to know what they did. Was it natural to Turians? Did they have to train in it like humans? What was the name of their agency? Did they have any national agency? Or interstellar agency? Species-wide agency? Did they encounter anything like Hollows? 

I was half-tempted to turn the soul of a criminal into a Hollow and send it against the Turians just to see how they would react. 

But … I knew better than to be impulsive like that. 

No no no.

I was an adult.

And an adult should talk to another adult like an adult instead of making megalomaniacal or violent plans against people who’ve yet to strike against them. Warn them against planning to fight me, maybe. Actually attack them, no.

Which brought me to the capital in one of my rare visits. 

I stood in front of the warehouse they had rented just outside the main spaceport commercial district and looked. 

And I mean looked. 

The entire warehouse was covered with a number of magical wards, but they didn’t behave quite like the ones that inquisitors used. No, these felt more … primitive? No, primal. Instead of being woven with concepts and the essence of civilization, the wards on this warehouse felt less like a fortress and more like a mountain. Yes, that was a good comparison.

A mountain ward. A bulwark. While the efficiency of the defense was poorer, it also required a much higher attack to break this ward. 

I smiled. 

Was this an intentional choice for their ward or was it just their go-to defense ward? 

My scholarly side - the one that kept pushing me to do experiments - jumped with giddy excitement as I thought about just how much I was going to learn from the Turians, voluntarily or not. 

I raised my hand -.

-briefly felt a lot of eyes on me-.

-then knocked on the side entrance.

The metal door rang with the thin rattling of cheap metals each time I knocked with my knuckles. It almost looked like it was shaking the doorway and the surrounding cheap fabricated metals, too, but it wasn’t. The door was just shaking too much from my knocking. That’s how cheap the warehouse was. 

I stepped back and waited for them to open the door. 

When they didn’t open after a full minute, I knocked again and stepped back. 

Obviously, I wasn’t going to leave without getting something, and they seemed to get that. 

The door lock clicked open, and the cheap metal door opened just slightly enough for a Turian’s face to show through. 

I noted the colony markings, knew nothing about it, and looked at the Turian.

I grinned, which made the Turian freeze. 

“Greetings, Turian with abnormal spiritual presence,” I smiled, pulling back my teeth-filled smile. I doubted that Turians had body language same as a human or Earth species, but it was better to be courteous just in case they were read in or trained in human body language, right? “I am Alan Marris, and I assume you know about me already.”

“... That is very presumptuous of you,” the Turian replied. This Turian was a … woman. You could tell that because of her shorter cranial crests. 

“You mean just like the coincidence that Turians who never showed interest in Elysium showing up with abnormal spiritual power, setting up a ward, and then trying their best to study what I was doing?”

She stiffened. 

Whoever was with her probably knew already that they posed no threat to me. Not only did I have the capital city and its surrounding rural countryside on lock down with my enslaved souls but the raw spirit exuding from me without effort was more than what they could fight. 

The woman in front of me was actually struggling to keep standing. 

It was funny how spiritually unaware people had an easier time standing next to me. I postulated that it had to do with their reserves. Spiritually unaware individuals were “empty,” so to speak. This meant that if a spiritual pressure came pressing down on them, they would be an open and porous sponge. It was why when someone lived next to a spiritually powerful individual long enough, then they would awaken their own spiritual powers. 

But too much at once and that porous sponge would rip apart from the inside from, well, explosion. 

For those who are already awake, however, another person’s spiritual pressure was that: pressure. Their vessels were already filled with theirs and deluding that was not a good idea. So naturally, our souls tried to cut off the environment’s influence on themselves. 

And that’s where the problem came from.

My spiritual pressure was, as explained by Tatsuki, like the ocean. 

Everyone else not protected by some means, if they walked up too close to me, drowned.

Which also showed itself as an indication of how strong someone was at their base level. Or their potential. 

The human inquisitors had been able to walk up until they were a thirty or so meters from me. 

This Turian woman, hiding behind their ward as she was, was still standing and talking. 

Now, I didn’t know just how strong this “mountain” ward was … but I doubted that it was good as Hidemasa’s Wall. I couldn’t tell exactly what it did, after all, or just how much of my passive reiatsu would seep through its barrier. 

For all I knew, the Turian woman could be weaker or stronger than the Catholic Inquisitors. 

“A-And what are you here for?” she asked me. 

“Hmm? Oh, curiosity.”

“... Curiosity…?” 

“Yes, curiosity,” I nodded. “See, I’ve encountered human spiritual wards before. They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, but you can tell that it’s a human ward by what kind of concepts are written into it. But yours? It doesn’t feel like a fortress wall or a gate. It feels like a mountain, looming over its lessers patiently and indifferently. Do you want to share notes?” 

She opened her mouth, closed it, and opened it again. 

“Can I… talk to my superior?”

“Of course!” A pause. “Oh, and can you also tell them to stop kidnapping my enslaved souls? They still have to pay off their crimes.” This time, I did smile with my teeth on full display. 

“O-Okay…” she stuttered out. “But before I … go back in and ask… can you tell me why there are so many ghosts on this world?”

I blinked. “What are you talking about? You mean aside from the Batarian souls?”

“Yes?”

“... That’s normal for a human world.”

She looked absolutely horrified.

-VB-

A/N: in which the Turian magician/shamans saw Fort Marris (Elysium) and became meek, put up their best ward on their rented warehouse, hid inside it for the duration of their mandated mission time, and got found by Marris anyway.