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==Chapter 11 - A Toreel Wizard in Prince Davion's Court==
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===In the day and life of a bored Adept===
October 14th, 3025~Back in the City~
Anybody who manned a shop in a sleepy backwater town knew how it was. Things go boring after a while. Outside peak hours, you mostly just puttered around, cleaned things up, straightened the same display over and over again, just to have something to do. If you were lucky, you might have a network enabled console or phone to distract yourself with.
If you didn't, or worse, if you did but the boss was insistent about work hours being for work and had the monitoring software to track what you did, then, well... there was always more cleaning you could do?
For Adept Grissom, peak hours tended to hit about once a week, when the mine workers got their paychecks and needed cash for a weekend of unwinding at the local bars (sort of like unwinding after a normal day of work, except longer and more likely to involve police intervention). The rest of the time, things were almost always dead.
Euschelus didn't have or warrant an actual HPG station. There used to be one here, back in the old capital. But, just like the locals had, Comstar had decided it wasn't worth the effort and dismantled it, shipping the whole thing back to the Inner Sphere before Grissom was even born. No, instead Euschelus was graced with "Class C" service. People dropped their messages off here. Stored messages would be beamed out once a month to a registered courier ship, which would also send back any replies from the previous month's messages. 
It was slow, but it was cheap to run, mostly automated, and required a staff of all of three people (plus a local or two serving as an extra pair of hands once a week). And the locals found it more reliable than hoping the Taurian Government could maintain communications with Protector Calderon having a shit every time he thought Hanse Davion might have sneezed in their direction.
They did more than just messenger service, of course (they had to just to keep busy). The small station (really just a storefront downtown) also provided banking services for the locals, and they ran a small Import Shop, selling small, cheap, but handy foreign goods you couldn't get locally, or you might have to wait months for if you tried to order from a Concordat company.
Still, most days were unbelievably dull! So Grissom had to find ways to keep busy. He liked to explore the old ruins scattered around the planet on his weekends, or indulge in some light espionage against the local government, just to keep his skills sharp. Bandit raids, though, those were his favorite. They gave him something to watch, maybe a little excitement or drama.
So while the locals had been hurried off to to shelters or were grabbing guns to help defend against the pirate menace, Grissom was on the roof of the station, watching the pirate vessel pass over the city and land in the valley below through his macrobinoculars. From his vantage point, he could see the whole thing unfolding, and he quickly realized this was something he needed to be recording.
(Fortunately, his binoculars had a record function)
He filmed it all. The resolution wasn't great. Not enough to really identify a person or anything, but just enough to see a headless Battlemech get back up, or see another mech get tossed into the air by nothing at all, or to see what seemed an awful lot like a dragon just kinda appear and go wailing on a third mech.
The Dropship spontaneously exploding looked pretty cool too.
When it was all over, Adept Grissom couldn't help but smile.
"Dear Precentor," he said to himself, "I finally have something to report."
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===Rantings of a Bored Wizard===
L'heo had come to get Chim straight away, just in case, though Chim passed on the potions he offered. Their supply of healing potions was limited, and Chim still wasn't sure how easy it would be to gather components to make more.
Also, there was a degree of pride to it, the same reason she passed on hitching a ride with him and instead chose to fly back under her own power, with L'heo flying by her side.
"You spent all that time reading everything you could," L'heo was saying, "but none of it was technical manuals?" 
"It was so boring and arcane!" Chim protested. "It's their dumb fault for deciding a tiny compressed artificial star was a good power source!" L'heo had figured out what had happened almost immediately. His cardgames with the crew had apparently gifted him a basic understanding how some of their technology worked. At least enough to guess what happens if a "fusion reactor's" containment vessel was suddenly turned to wood.
"I'm just thinking, this is getting to be a habit with you."
For a moment, just for a moment, Chim felt like maybe he had a point. But the moment passed quickly. "King Zog's Ironclad Leviathan was totally different!" She protested. "Of course that one exploded! It was always going to explode! Everything King Zog builds inevitably explodes! Reasonable people don't build their ships with giant pressure bombs aboard! Goblins build things like that! We should find the engineers of that spaceship and see if they speak Goblinoid! 'Përshëndetje Zotëri! Pse anija juaj vazhdon të shpërthejë?'"
Her rant seemed to get a bit of a chuckle from L'heo, which actually made her feel a little better. 
Though some of that began to fade a little from the empathic impressions she was now getting from Polly. Annoyance, frustration, a hint of contempt. It was a... familiar cocktail.
"Great," she said. "Celia's making a scene again."
*; Author's Disclaimer: The choice of Albanian for the Goblinoid tongue was made purely as a result of a gag game of Hearts of Iron IV I've been playing the last couple of days (Kneel before Zog!), and in no way reflects anything else, as I am too lazy to have an actual opinion on the Albanian people or culture. Thank you for your time. Also Kneel before Zog.
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===Seeing evil that lurks in souls of People===
"This is why Paladins never get invited to the really nice parties," the cat was saying. "You're always so judgmental about every damned thing." The more Brett watched, the weirder it seemed (weirder than a cat speaking?) as the cat's mouth movements didn't seem to completely correspond with the words.
"Exactement, chaque damne chose!" the woman responded. "C'est mon travail!" She spoke so forcefully that she was yanking the prisoner around by his collar without even really noticing.
Brett's French was non-existent. But he did speak Spanish, and there was just enough overlap that it... kinda sounded like she was agreeing with the Cat? So why all the angry language?
"Uh... 'scuse me," he said. "If you're going to have this argument in front of me, could you both speak English?"
The cat glanced over, briefly surprised. "Oh," he said. "Celia doesn't actually understand that, or anything you say." 
"Huh," Brett responded. "But she understands you?"
"Yeah," the cat replied. "But I'm speaking the truespeech. It's different. To your mortal ears, it just sounds like your native tongue."
"Mortal ears, huh?" Brett said, having about reached his capacity for giving a crap about this nonsense. "So what is she saying?"
"She wants to testify on the prisoner's behalf," the cat said. 
The woman nodded enthusiastically. "Oui oui! Toute personne vraiment capable de rédemption devrait avoir cette chance."
Brett looked at her. "Okay, you? I can't understand you."
"He can't understand you, Celia," the cat reiterated. The woman frowned.
Brett sighed. "Okay, why does she want to testify on his behalf?"
The cat shrugged. "Because she doesn't sense any evil in him."
"Huh," Brett said again. "I don't think first impressions are admissible in a court of law." There were a couple of other things going on around him. In the distance, the dragon was rapidly returning, probably with the little girl in tow. And behind them, Corporal Weldon was approaching from the helicopter. 
"Another helo is on the way in!" Corporal Weldon called out. "Bringing the med team and transport for the prisoner." He stopped short when the Dragon swooped down from above and came to an impressively soft landing.
"It's a bit more than a first impression," the cat explained. "But it's a bit complicated and..." he looked at the woman, "...I don't think it works that way here."
"Ce pouvoir est accordé par mon dieu!" The woman protested. "Comment pouvez-vous douter de sa capacité après toutes ces années?"
Corporal Weldon had found his nerve to take the last few steps. "She speaks French?"
"Yeah," Brett confirmed. "How about you?"
Weldon shrugged. "When I was in secondary school some crazy group declared French the language of oppressors, and Mom bought it. So I had to settle for Spanish like all the good boys and girls. You?"
"More cute girls taking Spanish," Brett admitted. "Choice was obvious."
The cat and the women were still arguing, and the dragon had taken this moment to somehow compress himself into the form of an ordinary man. So Brett could be excused for not noticing the little girl until she spoke up.
"Oh for goodness sake," she said, then briefly chanted and tough the woman while holding a small pyramid in her other hand, which vanished in a puff of smoke.
"Le pouvoir des dieux est absolu!" the woman was saying, "Et leur influence continue de s'étendre even beyond our lands." She paused to nod to the girl. "Thank you my lady." She said, her lips not entirely in sync with what she was saying. She then turned her attention to Brett. "As I was explaining to the cat, I have abilities that allow me to sense the evil with a person's very being, granted to me by my God."
"Celia..." the girl started to say.
"Well," Brett said. "That's either horseshit or existentially terrifying."
"That dragon just turned into a person," Corporal Weldon pointed out. 
"I understand your doubts," the woman said. "And I am willing to do what I must to prove my ability."
"You can't," the cat said. "Because it doesn't work here."
"I am not talking to you!" the woman protested before turning her attention back to Brett. "I would never ask you to ignore your own laws. I simply wish for the opportunity to speak." 
The prisoner finally chose this moment to speak up. "Can I say I'm totally on board with listening to what she has to say?" 
Brett looked down at the prisoner. "That why you gave up so easily? Hoping she'd talk us out of hanging you?"
"I gave up because the cat threatened to eat me!" the prisoner said. "But hey, I got a better option?"
"Celia," the girl said. "Polly is right."
Celia turned abruptly, pulling the prisoner along with her. "My lady!" she protested. "You can't believe..."
"Literally a celestial being," the cat said, "but that's alright."
"It's not your power," the dragon, now elderly man, said. "It's these people. This realm. It isn't built like ours. The people are fundamentally different."
Brett was completely lost, but that was okay. Still, the girl decided to help.
"You see," she began to explain to him, "in our world, good and evil, law and chaos, they're real, tangible things. What you would call heaven and hell, or angels and demons, they're real, discrete things, not just concepts or legends or metaphors. Even the concept of none of those things at all, or maybe all of them at once, exists as it own discrete place with its own discrete denizens. A person born into our world is tied to it. Their personality is marked by the outer plane which most defines it. A person can choose to change their ways, just like your people can, but it doesn't remove that mark, just changes it to a new one."
Nope, wasn't helping. "So she can actually see evil in people?"
"In our people, yes." the girl confirmed. "If it predominates their soul. But it's actually dependent on evil being more than just a concept. And... it isn't here. As near as I can tell, there is no plane of evil. No absolute, tangible manifestation of evil, or any of the other higher planes we're familiar with. None of you were born with that link."
She looked down, clearly sad. "I'm sorry, Celia, I should have told you sooner."
Corporal Weldon spoke next. "Well I'm leaning towards horseshit."
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==Chapter Notes==
*Author's Chapter Notes : Reader Question 1For the dropship, Chim understands that the ships use electrical power to function conducted through metal wiring. She was also pretty certain wood wouldn't be up to handling the same amount of stress as a metal frame. So she assumed that at the very least the ship wouldn't function, and at worse might collapse a bit or catch on fire.She was just fuzzy on where the electrical power (and thrust) comes from.Author's Answer for Question 1:xReader Question 2:There were several references to Chim's speech not matching her lips; I imagine she was using something like Tongues or Comprehend Languages. The dragon was already able to speak Toreeli Common/English and the cat communicates telepathically, by the look of it. Celia is evidently muddling by with her Elvish/French and occasional castings from Chim. (Chim's Language abilities)Author's Answer for Question 2:Also, Chim's homeland is so remote from the rest of Toreel that her people don't natively speak the common tongue of the rest of the world. I figure her own local brand of common is Welsh. Author Notes on the Main Toreel Characters: Chim is level 20, because why not go all the way?Celia is a level 15 paladin.L'heo is a wyrm aged silver dragon. This technically presents a continuity problem, and that is something I will never provide an explanation for.Other fun note, Chim has a (blood related) sister who's an elf. Annoyingly, this already has a plausible explanation.
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