Summoner

Hiding

Golden glowing hair, peaking out from under a fedora. Those weren't easy to find. Accompanying the hair were the tell tail glowing irises of matching color. His complexion, immaculate.

Egil didn't really care about the scene. He just needed to get into the crowd.

"...these circlets were made from gold. Gold that your kingdom has denied you!" The fae spoke in a booming voice.

Egil approached the edge, and began gently pushing his way towards the front. ...circlets? Wait, is he referring to the shackles?

Around Egil stood people from various implied backgrounds. Leather workers. Butchers, with dried blood speckling their arms. The occasional machine workers, in their overalls. Some were nodding in agreement.

Yeah, try an kill me now asshole! Among all these innocent people, the church will look spectacular after that.

"You toil in the machine shops. In the fields. You cut lumber. You sew clothing... and for what?" The fae raised a simple iron coin, which became the standard currency across Europe, during the demonic war to speed up arms trades between kingdoms.

"This is a symbol. Nothing more. Its not gold. Its not silver. Where is your wealth!?"

Egil raised an eyebrow. The reason silver was a bitch to find was apparent: military applications against magic.

The reason gold isnt used as a currency anymore is because of the demonic wars. As the invasion ramped up, kingdoms sought ways to speed up trades for food and weapons, since no kingdom could be entirely self sufficient. Gold trades required tests for purity, which were never reliable and the metallurgists exploited the hell out of that.

When the weapons smiths started going bankrupt, and heading east, the kingdoms agreed to a standardized currency, and then propped up the smiths with loans. It worked well enough to keep them around. Following the war, some of the governments tried to return to gold trading, and promptly collapsed because gold still had the same problems.

Demonologists further compounded the problem, since their ability to acquire resources is far greater than any of the competition. One of the textbook strategies for destroying a 'golden kingdom' didn't really involve sending demons in to kill anyone. Its instead, the summoner would just mine gold, and use it to pay everyone off.

A particularly vindictive summoner would go into a region and just buy-up everything. The price of goods would sky rocket and the value of gold would plummet. Artificial shortages would lead to rebellion. Once that happened, the merchants would leave, the population would starve, and the government would collapse.

Symbolic currency also prevented this, since it required summoners to turn their resources into currency, before they could crash an economy. This required finding buyers and building relationships; which in-turn evolved into the sort of role that summoner guilds typically have now... when they're not destroying themselves from the inside.

But, there was a problem with explaining all this to the average citizen, and Egil learned this the hard way: If you move past the concepts of 'good' and 'evil.' Ask the average person to view the cause and effect of events, and suddenly they are lost. The adversarial nature of humanity is also its security blanket. As long as there's an 'us' and a 'them' the masses will pick a side, and find comfort in that. ...even if the results are horrifying.

Amidst the murmuring, a boy in his 20's stepped forward. His hair reached down to his buttocks. His arms well defined like that of a mechanist. He reached down, picking up a pair of shackles, contemplating them. A girl, fair and curvy, joined him. She shook her head 'no.'

He put his hand on her shoulder. Egil couldn't make out the words.

"You're not going to speak up?" Asked the soft voice of Leoni. "Warn them?"

The discussions happening around Egil seemed distant. Quiet. He felt his blood grow cold as the boy clasped one golden ring around the wrist of his lady love.

"Much like with cattle, who are duped into compliance by the mere presence of a fence, some paths are meant to have dead ends."

'Click' went the 2nd clasp. Though the sound was merely in Egil's head. And with that, the girl vanished from this world.

"You could have saved her."

The crowd gasped in response to an event Egil was already well acquainted with.

"Could I have though? The mind isn't always aware it needs 'rescued.' I could disperse the crowd, but that would leave them wondering about the road not taken."

An il-kept man, distended gut and all pushed himself roughly through the crowed, picking up the next set of manacles. The woman who was presumably his wife appeared to try and pull him away.

"There's a story behind all of these actions." Egil continued. "Histories we don't know about." The il-kept man vaporized from the woman's grip. "Rescuing someone from a situation is never a single act."

Another person from the crowd. A woman this time. Battered and bruised. Egil could hear her thoughts: 'Anywhere must be better than here.'

"Where are reasons we picked the paths we have. What terrifies me the most , is not-" Egil's stream of thoughts were interrupted by the loud clank of metal against stone.

"FALSE MESSIAH!!!!"

Oh, here we go. Egil rolled his eyes, turning to the source of the proclamation. My god, this place is packed full of assholes. He certainly didn't see himself as 'without sin' in this regard. But by comparison to these two...

The zealot stood there, with his comically oversized steel cross, leaning against his body, while the prognosticator extended a dark bony finger at the fae. "Return to your penance, lambs! This devil plans to buy your souls with lies!"

...well, he wasn't necessarily wrong there.

"You're not one of the chosen." The fae responded dismissively.

"Begone foul demon!"

"You must be confused. Fae aren't demons."

It didn't take much effort to understand the sweeping generalization, but of course the fae isn't going to understand that. Egil started slowly edging his way out from between the two confrontational parties. No sense in getting stuck in the crossfire.

The fae started slowly extending the barely visible shades of dark glowing red and blue wisps from his back. A face caught his eye. A woman, with a sleeping toddler on her shoulder. He could see in her eyes a sharpness. Someone assessing the situation moment-by-moment. That was what he looked for.

Egil reached out, resting his hand on her free shoulder. This shocked her into paying attention to him. He looked at the zealot, then at the fae, so it would be clear to her he was grasping the whole situation.

"Angel." Came the murmurings from the crowd.

Egil looked into her suddenly stunned eyes. He leaned in. "Go home and lock your door." He whispered.

She immediately turned a man, apparently her husband, grabbing his hand. "We need to go!" He heard her say.

"So he does care." Remarked Leoni.

Egil let the comment go without a response. The challenge isn't warning others. Its doing so in a way that's effective.