Kaelen remembered the novel then.
In the story, Elara had escaped the kidnappers sent by her family and went home no explanation in between. It was just a sentence 'She emerged from the eastern swamps a month later, hollow-eyed and silent, and she never spoke of what she had endured.'
But when the protagonist group found the cult had been found afterwards, their temples were burned, their leaders executed and their bodies displayed on the walls of the capital as warnings.
But Kaelen had always wondered. He had read the book twice in his old life, looking for clues, looking for the seams in the story. What grudge did Elara have with the cult to make her put aside hunting her family's killers and hunt them instead. Turns out they had captured her.
Now he understood.
He looked at Elara. She was asleep now her hands were clenched into fists even in sleep. Her nails had left crescents in her palms.
She had not been rescued in the novel, she had escaped, and then she had gone back.
'What did they do to you?' Kaelen thought. 'What did you become?'
The system flickered, but he dismissed it.
Elara's family home had burned down a month after her escape from the kidnappers, She had managed to survive this devilish place only to go back and find out that her husband and three children were dead.
Her character in the book was paranoid, but she lost everything in the same period.
The Ashworths had sold her.
And Elara had burned their house down a month later.
He looked down at the pig, Iron was sleeping, curled in a tight ball at his feet, his golden eyes hidden behind closed lids. The pig's sides rose and fell with slow, even breaths
Twist was awake, the goat was perched on a broken column a few feet away, his golden eyes fixed on Kaelen with an intensity that had stopped being flattering and started being creepy. He watched Kaelen the way a scholar watches a specimen.
"You are staring again," Kaelen said.
"Yes," Twist said.
"Why?"
"Because you just showed us more emotion." The goat's tail flicked. "I do not understand emotion, although I am better than Silas I struggle to learn, watching you struggle with it is... educational."
Kaelen looked away from the goat's golden eyes.
'I need to send a letter.'
The thought came to him fully formed, as if someone else had placed it in his head. He needed to contact the Ambiourious matriarch. Not the patriach, the sickly kind one who had let his wife be kidnapped.
If the Ashworths knew that Elara had escaped, that she was alive, they would panic. They would send word to the cult, they would try to capture her before she could talk. They would burn her family down.
Unless someone reacted first.
Kaelen called up the system. The interface glowed in the dark, blue and cold, the words sharp against the black.
[Letter Composition Service: Available]
[Features: Dictation, formatting, encryption, forgery.]
[Base Price: 2 points per letter.]
"Two points," Kaelen muttered. "Fine."
He dictated the letter in his head. The words came quickly, polished, the kind of language that nobles used. He told the matriarch that an enemy was planning to kill her family and she should move away secretly.
Can you make it sound like it was written by Elara.
[Option : Protagonist's diction – 3 points]
"Fine."
The letter appeared in his hand. The paper was fine, the ink was dark, and the handwriting was perfect, too perfect infact it looked like it had been printed by a machine.
"Can you make it look handwritten?" Kaelen asked.
[Option: Handwriting Simulation – 2 points per letter.]
"Another two points. Fine."
The letter shimmered. The handwriting changed, now it looked like it had been written by a person. A nervous person, maybe, with a slight tremor in the strokes, but a person. The issue was the way of speaking was not his but the handwriting was.
Kaelen looked at the letter the sighed.
"Can you make it look like her handwriting?"
[Option: Specific Handwriting Forgery – 0.5 points per letter.]
"Half a point. Why didn't you just tell me the full price from the beginning?"
[System does not speculate on user preferences. User must specify requirements, the system fulfills requirements once user makes them. This is efficient.]
"Atleast know if I ask for someone's language diction I also need their handwriting."
[Efficiency is not calibrated for user comfort.]
Kaelen's jaw tightened. He could feel a headache building behind his eyes. The kind of headache that came from dealing with bureaucracy, whether human or digital.
"Fine. Do it. Make it look like Elara Ashworth wrote it."
[Processing. Handwriting sample required.]
Kaelen looked at Elara, she was too far and did not know him asking for a handwriting sample would be hard.
He did not have a sample.
"Can you extrapolate from context?"
[Insufficient data.]
"Then use something else, use her family's records. Use the betrothal contract, use anything."
[2 points]
Kaelen gritted his teeth. "Fine,"
[Accessing Ashworth family archives. Handwriting sample acquired. Forgery in progress.]
The letter shimmered again. Kaelen looked at it, the handwriting was different now. Looser. More feminine. The letters slanted to the right, and the loops on the 'g's and 'j's were wide and careless. It looked like a young woman's handwriting.
Kaelen did not know if it was accurate.It would be close enough to fool someone who wanted to be fooled.
"Now I need to send it."
[Option: Letter Carrier – 100 points.]
[Description: A small construct designed to deliver letters to specific recipients. Cannot be intercepted, cannot be traced. Self-destructs after delivery.]
"One hundred points."
[Letter carriers are expensive to produce and materials are sourced from different worlds. They require mana cores, they require navigation arrays. They require…]
"I do not care, give me the carrier."
[Processing, points deducted.]
A small thing appeared in Kaelen's hand. It was about the size of a mouse, made of folded paper and metal and something that looked like glass but was not. Its wings were translucent, veined, and they beat softly against his palm. Its eyes were tiny points of light, blue and steady.
"You are a letter carrier," Kaelen said.
The thing chirped.
"I need you to deliver this to the Ambiourious estate. To the Ashworth matriarch. Directly to her. No one else."
The thing chirped again. Its wings beat faster.
[Map to Recipient: 200 points.]
[Description: A direct route to the Ashworth matriarch's private chambers. Includes security bypass. Includes timing recommendations for optimal delivery.]
Kaelen closed his eyes. He could feel the points draining. Points he had harvested from a rotting corpse. The points from finding the temple all gone..
"Two hundred points. For a map."
[The Ashworth estate is heavily warded. Without the map, the carrier will fail. The letter will be lost. The opportunity will be gone.]
Kaelen opened his eyes.
"Give me the map."
[Processing. Points deducted.]
The map appeared in his mind. Just there, suddenly, a glowing overlay that showed the Ashworth estate, the guards, the wards, the secret passages, the matriarch's private chambers on the third floor, the window that was always left unlocked because the servants were afraid of the old woman and did not want to wake her.
Kaelen pressed the letter into the carrier's tiny hands. The construct folded it carefully, tucked it into a compartment in its chest, and looked up at him with its blue-light eyes.
"Go," Kaelen said. "Find her. Give her the letter. And then disappear."
The carrier launched from his hand. Its wings beat once, twice, and then it was gone, a blur of paper and metal and light, gone through the crack in the door and into the dark.
Kaelen watched it go.
"Points," he muttered. "Three hundred and two points for a letter and a bug and a map that is now stuck in my head."
[System efficiency is not measured in user satisfaction.]
"You are enjoying this."
[System does not experience enjoyment. System experiences optimization. Currently, system is highly optimized.]
Kaelen wanted to throw something. He did not have anything to throw. He settled for glaring at the interface until it dimmed and vanished.
---
Twist was still watching him, the rest were a sleep only markus was looking to the side..
The goat had not moved from the broken column. His golden eyes were still fixed on Kaelen's face. His tail flicked slowly, rhythmically, like a metronome counting out the seconds.
It clearly did not see anything wrong with a letter appearing in thin air.
"I need you to do something," Kaelen said.
"My first task."
"I need you to follow the carrier, make sure it reaches the matriarch and most importantly make sure she reads the letter and find a way to make her leave the manor."
Twist tilted his head. The gesture was too fluid It has not stopped being unnerving.
"You are asking me to leave, to go into the human world. To interact with humans who will as a goat."
"Yes."
"You trust me to do this."
"I trust you to do what benefits you.." Kaelen held the goat's golden gaze. "So yes. I trust you. For now."
Twist was silent for a long moment. His tail stopped flicking, his ears swiveled forward, then back, then forward again.
"The carrier will reach the matriarch in four hours. I will be there when it arrives. I will watch her read the letter. I will report back." The goat hopped off the column, landing without sound. "But I want something in return."
"What?"
"When this is over, I want you to help me find something."
"What?"
"The place where we were made, the ones who summoned us. They are gone now, dead. Erased, but their works remain." The goat walked to Kaelen's feet and looked up at him. "I want to know how to end the contract."
Kaelen looked at the goat. At its golden eyes, ancient and patient and full of something that might have been pain.
"Fine," Kaelen said.
Twist blinked.
"Acceptable," the goat said.
And then he was gone. Through the crack in the door and into the dark, faster than a goat should move, quieter than a shadow should be.
Kaelen sat alone with the sleeping pig and the sleeping girl and the list of children burning in his coat.
"Points," he muttered again.
The system did not respond.
He was beginning to hate the system, it was his love for money taking over. He was also beginning to depend on it, his modern love for efficiency was also taking over.