Malza’s Unexpectedly Expected Message

Malza felt like she was going to lose her composure, and maybe snap over something completely unrelated, if she didn’t get some distance regarding the residence of Yuri’s manor. All the women, now including her charge, Inoshana, had intimate encounters with Yuri and would casually exchange notes about their experiences when not occupied with other matters. She decided that Inoshana was reasonably safe surrounded by the other women of the house, and the manor itself was surprisingly defensible with its layout. So, she decided to visit the temple and attend to any messages that arrived for her charge and herself. And for some reason, she was getting an ominous feeling the closer she got to the temple.

The placement of Yuri’s residential manor, which was a unique architecture not employed anywhere else, for the time being, meant Malza’s trek to the temple was the better part of an hour, which she didn’t mind as it gave her some alone time to think on things for herself. The trek was uneventful; any monsters that had tried to interfere with her transit were so middlingly weak she could take them out with a single nearly casual swing of her weapon. She was heading there in her armor, because she was going there in an official capacity, and she did not want to play dress-up with the enchanted wardrobe in her assigned room just yet.

The temple was the sort of reserved kind of busy all temples were, each rank going about the tasks and objectives they had for the day. The temple’s head, the high priestess known as Sacred Dancer, was there to observe Malza’s entrance on one of the higher levels of the temple, and she was looking considerably far along in her pregnancy. Yuri had explained that back where he came from, equines, like horses, typically had pregnancies that last almost an entire year. It was reasoned that the demographics with animal-like features would follow similar reproductive cycles to the creatures they most resembled. Malza had to admit it was an elegant sort of reasoning that she had not really taken the time to contemplate; to her, all the species were just that. But the reasoning she had meant that certain cycles would be species-specific, which would mean Inoshana’s inevitable pregnancy would be considerably different than Malza’s potential future pregnancy, and those would both be different from the lion-kin and rabbitfolk cycles when Yuri got around to actually impregnating them.

Malza shook her head for a moment to get out of that line of thinking; the high priestess of the temple herself had the mail of Inoshana and Malza, and she wasn’t being shy about showing that with how she had the parchments positioned in her hands. The one with the symbol of the Goddess of the Night on it was clearly for Inoshana’s eyes and use only; the two had been informed that a special communication scroll would be heading to the temple here so Inoshana could discuss matters with her home temple directly. As for Malza, the other scroll had the symbol of her paladin order on it, and since she hadn’t been forewarned about this sort of thing, it could only mean one thing: a change or amendment to her directives.

Malza didn’t like that fact, but she still had to retrieve the texts and leave. She ascended the stairs to meet the well-endowed equine woman serving as this temple’s highest authority. “Your Holiness,” said Malza when she reached the top of the stairs and began approaching the equine priestess, “I see you decided to personally hold on to messages for my ward and myself.”

“Yes,” said Sacred Dancer with mild amusement in her voice, handing the two scrolls to Malza once the goat woman was close enough, “and I received an oracle about you not liking what is written in your message; at best, you’ll probably be irked or annoyed.”

“Those are two possibilities I considered when I saw the seal of my order on one of the messages you were holding,” said Malza respectfully as she took the two scrolls. Turning around, she found an acolyte she hadn’t even noticed holding out a scroll with what was clearly a seal that was unfamiliar to her.

“Before you say anything,” said the high priestess, “that is a text I put together for Yuri; please pass it along to him as soon as possible.”

“Understood,” said Malza as she took the scroll in the same hand that held the message for her.

“Oh, and the gnome’s atelier at the edge of town has a new underground tunnel leading to Yuri’s grounds, if you are looking for an alternate route back to his establishment.”

Malza gave an annoyed sigh before saying, “Why was I not informed about this earlier?”

“It is primarily a matter involving Yuri and the women who have chosen to remain in close proximity to him. Also, did you even inquire about the known routes from his estate to this town before now?”

“No, I was spending all my time there utilizing my resources to maintain my professionalism,” said Malza with an annoyed edge to her voice that was still respectful to the equine priestess, “and you just pointed out an oversight that was completely my failing; I thank you for that.” With that, Malza gave a respectful bow to the priestesses around her and headed back out.

Malza headed straight for the atelier; if it really was being used as an occasional transit point, then she could utilize it as well. The chances were that the tunnel would be on the lower level, beneath the main floor, going by what was implied in her earlier conversation. When Malz arrived at the atelier, the doors opened for her on their own, almost like the facility had been expecting her, and she cautiously entered the facility. Turning to look behind her, Malza saw the doors close behind her of their own accord and a set of locks magically position themselves into the locked position. When she turned her attention to what was in front of her, a set of magical arrows was lighting up the floor and leading her to the stairway. Malza decided to have a talk with the gnome about all this later.

In fairly short order, Malza was already at the third sublevel, which she hadn’t fully anticipated, and was led to a blank wall a good ways down the hallway that surrounded the stairs, which slid aside as she approached to reveal a tunnel with a strange cart and a line on the ground leading all the way down the tunnel well past where she could see into the tunnel. She carefully got on the cart and saw what looked like arrows pointing in different directions down the tunnel. She tapped the arrow pointing in the direction down the tunnel that was clearly where Yuri’s grounds were. A moment later, the arrow lit up, and the cart began heading down the track at a speed almost equal to one of Malza’s power walks. A little over an hour later, the cart came to a stop at the other end of the tunnel, which was surprisingly well-lit as she traveled down it, but the lights actually went out behind her after she had passed a point beyond them by a few feet.

The point at the other end of the tunnel looked a bit cluttered, with devices and objects Malza was unfamiliar with. After navigating the small maze of strange items, Malza came upon a metal staircase with a metal railing on either side; the sound and feel of the metal was unlike any metal she had encountered before, and she had only been able to tell it was some kind of metal by the way the light interacted with it as she looked at the stairs and railing. After climbing the stairs for a minute or two, Malza reached the doorway at the top of the stairs. The stairs opened up to a small hallway she was vaguely familiar with from the quick tour she and Inoshana had been given by two of the women in Yuri’s orbit a few hours before Inoshana had her intimate encounter with Yuri. Malza had been barely paying attention on the tour; she was still trying to process how strange this manor was.

A few minutes later, Malza finally found herself in the kitchen area, where Inoshana was reading a book with cooking instructions, her top completely missing. Malza gave a polite cough to draw attention to herself as she approached the fox woman. After the two exchanged pleasantries, Malza handed the scroll meant for the fox priestess before saying, “Any idea where Yuri is? I have a document for him from the local high priestess.”

“Last I checked,” said Inoshana with a slight tilt of her head to show she was in a state of recollection, “he was in the library assisting Althana access some reading materials that were on an out-of-the-way shelf.”

“Thank you kindly,” said Malza as she made her way to the library from the kitchen, she at least remembered where that chamber was in this place, mainly because she spent the majority of her time there when Inoshana got intimate with Yuri for the night, she basically fell asleep in a reading chair with a book of shield types and their histories to avoid the chance of hearing the two going at it sexually; she actually made her way back to her room a few minutes before Inoshana left the room she was having a sexual encounter in.

A few mintues later, and Malza was at the library, when she found Yuri, she hurried over to him gave him a quick explanation of the message and left before potentially making things awkward for herself. She then quickly retreated to her room and locked its door before opening the letter. When Malza opened the letter, her trepidation about things felt inadequate. This was a message from her family, which she thought she had distanced herself from quite well over the past decade.

The letter read, “Malzaradelshirolkaramna.” Her full name was not fun to see. There were quite a few reasons she chose to use only the first five letters of it as her given name: “it has come to our attention of the opportunities that have arisen for you recently,” and with merchant families, this sort of thing being said to anyone could be an issue. Malza’s family basically owned and controlled three of the biggest merchant guilds in the country. She left because she wanted away from all the merchant nonsense and joined up with an order that had quite a few regulations regarding finances and their access: “It has been decided you will respond to us with an answer. You will aid in the continuation of the family and its business with your interactions with the opportunity the temple has mandated for the fox under your charge.”

Malza put the message down and pinched the bridge of her nose. Her family was aware of a reproduction opportunity discovered by the temple, but they didn’t know about Yuri or his status as an Alpharian; at the very least, the temple didn’t have any leaks regarding information about him. She picked up the parchment again, it felt heavier than usual, slowly turning the sheet over, she found evidence of someone using a spell to overlay a message and gave an annoyed sigh, someone in the order’s messaging chain had been successfully bribed to allow a mage, likely one of her elder siblings that decided learn the arcane arts, to cast a spell on the original to have their message on the sheet as well and be the one that was visible.

This was going to be a headache. The ritual for undoing this sort of thing, which Malza had prioritized during her studies of magic, was not short and tended to cost much more than just the time of those involved. She was not looking forward to the conversations that were coming. She carefully tucked the message into a sealed black box that she kept as part of her standard traveling kit, then set the box on her bed before heading out of the room to find Thelsia. She was going to need someone well-versed in magic and spellcraft for what needed to be done next.