Pietra looked through the newly arrived shipment as she picked out the best silk from what was left. Most of it had already been taken by the other seamstresses, and Pietra felt lucky that at least some had been left behind she could work with.
If not, it would be hard to ever save up and buy their freedom, not to mention pay the monthly dues.
Putting all she could get in her spatial bag, she paid at the exit of the warehouse before heading home for the day. Renting a spatial bag had luckily gotten quite cheap recently as their clan had a lot fewer members than they used to.
On the way home, she couldn’t help but peek at her neighbor’s small residence. It looked worse by the day due to a lack of maintenance, but Pietra couldn’t really say anything. They had lost the patriarch of their family and thus their position, despite him being the late son of an elder… alas, all that was from the days of old.
Getting home, Pietra smiled the moment she opened the door, fighting through any feelings of exhaustion.
“Mom!” her youngest yelled as she got up from her little bench and ran over.
“Hey honey,” Pietra said with a radiant smile, kneeling down and scooping up her daughter in a hug.
Holding her daughter tight, she looked out the small window showing the neighbor’s house, and inside, she saw a tall but very thin elf sitting in front of a small worktable with listless eyes. Pietra couldn’t help but sigh internally at the sight, holding her daughter even closer than before.
Deliah was truly an unfortunate soul. She had lost not only her husband but also her eldest daughter due to unfortunate timing when the Order of the Malefic had taken over. It had been a few years since it happened, and even if there had been some changes for their clan, it hadn’t really impacted the normal clan members much. It was more the higher-ups who had to deal with new rules.
Things were pretty bad initially. Right when the Order took over, they required the clan to send a certain number of E and D-grades to the Order every month and year, respectively. That had ended pretty fast, though, and since then, they had only been required to pay taxes.Of course, if they didn’t pay the required taxes, the Order would make up for the difference by taking something else of equal value – more often than not, a few slaves. Which was honestly getting off pretty cheap, considering they were all slaves of the Order to begin with, though Pietra guessed they were considered some other kinds of slaves than those taken to the Order? The members of the clan didn’t have any contracts, after all.
That was why everyone had to contribute, and as a widow, Deliah had to contribute extra as her husband couldn’t. Her remaining children weren’t old enough to contribute much yet, and as she was responsible for them, she had to pay their share.
Honestly, it was a miracle she hadn’t given up any of them yet by sending them to the Order. Pietra already had a hard enough time as a single mother paying for her one daughter and herself, and even if Deliah was a pretty talented jeweler who could use some of the many raw gemstones found in the mines, she had to be struggling to provide for four people alone.
“Mom?” her daughter interrupted her train of thought.
Pietra smiled and shook her head as she stood up and looked down at her daughter. “I was just thinking about adult stuff. Now, what do you want for dinner?”
Deliah coughed as she suppressed the pain. The kids were still in the small academy the clan had established, so she had to finish work before they came home. After a moment of hesitation, she reached into a drawer in her desk and pulled out a potion. It was her last one, but she was too low on resources to keep going.
She hadn’t been able to fully regenerate her stamina and mana pool for several months by now, and it was starting to take a toll. The healer had said she was at risk of taking minor soul damage from overexertion, but she didn’t really have a choice. Thus, she quickly drank the potion, ignoring the slightly rancid taste of a low-quality product. Low-quality but cheap product.
Her husband had been a pinnacle D-grade, which had given their family a respectable position in the social hierarchy, not to mention who her husband’s father was. The fact that her father-in-law was an elder of the clan had helped to at least allow the kids into the academy to put some pressure off Deliah, and if all things went well, they all had a good chance of reaching D-grade. Assuming Deliah herself could continue to support them… something she would do everything in her power to do.
No matter how many years passed, she still couldn’t forgive herself for what had happened to her eldest daughter. Her husband had been insistent on Meira being their way out of the clan and a way to a better life, and Deliah hadn’t done enough to try and convince him otherwise or protect her daughter.
Despite her initial reluctance to go along with her husband, perhaps Deliah herself had begun to believe that marrying a young master from the Brimstone Conglomerate would have been a better fate than staying in the clan for the rest of her life. She would be a slave in both places, but at least she had a chance, however minor, for a bright future as the bride of an influential young man. Meira was smart and a talented healer, so as long as the young master had taken a liking to her, she could definitely have reached D-grade.
Now, none of that mattered. Deliah had agreed to let her husband take Meira to meet the young master, and the rest was history. The Brimstone Conglomerate had been destroyed, gods had fallen, and she had lost her eldest daughter and husband. What made it worse was that she could only blame herself, as blaming such massive factions with untold power like the Order was utterly meaningless.
So Deliah still hadn’t forgiven herself yet for letting Meira leave that day. The night before Meira and her husband had gone to the branch of the Conglomerate, Meira had told her mother she wasn’t sure she wanted to go and if she couldn’t just stay home and work as a healer for the miners… and Deliah had been the one to convince her it was for the best to follow her father.
She had effectively sent her daughter to her death. Unknowingly, but that was still what she had done. At least if she had stayed back in the clan, she would still be alive. Especially now that the Order at least offered a way to earn true freedom through buying yourself a ticket to elsewhere…
That’s why Deliah wouldn’t give up on any of her children. She hadn’t fought enough for Meira, and there was no way she going to let her little brother and two little sisters down in the same way. Who knows, maybe she could even get them off the Great Planet and take them somewhere safe one day.
So she worked. All she could hope for right now was that her body would hold up until the three of them could begin to provide for themselves, and the rest was simply hopeful thinking. But for her children, it was worth it to at least try.
Tanyl and Sakala were her two youngest. They were twins, a boy and a girl, both having just turned twenty this year and both in mid-tier E-grade. Elves having twins was incredibly rare, and while Deliah knew that it was considered relatively common among humans and even half-elves, it had come as a massive surprise to her and her husband. They had never planned on having more than three children but had ended up with four. Despite the struggles that had brought, Deliah had never once viewed the two of them as anything but blessings.
Kythela was their older sister. She was only four years older than her two siblings and was also in mid-tier E-grade. Meira had been quite a bit older than both the twins and her sister, and being more talented, she had been close to D-grade before she passed away. Deliah also knew that none of her kids were fully over losing their father and older sister, which was part of the reason why they worked so hard these days.
Hours passed, and Deliah finally managed to finish her work for the day. Her quota was high, but she could do it. Moreover, recently, she had even gained a few levels. She believed she had already exhausted all her potential, so that had been a welcome surprise and had helped her get her work done quicker and better. She was still only mid-tier D-grade, but that was already considered pretty good within the clan.
Looking at the sky outside, she still had a bit of time before the kids came home, so she went to take a quick nap. She would get a delivery again around nighttime and had more jewelry to complete while everyone else slept, so she had to try and restore her resources now to be able to do her job later.
She had barely managed to lie down and close her eyes when she heard a commotion at the door. With a brief glance out the window, she saw that around an hour had passed, but she still hurriedly got up right as the door opened.
“We’re home!” Kythela yelled loud enough for even the neighbors to hear. It wasn’t like their house was even big, having only three bedrooms total, so yelling was totally unnecessary.
Deliah didn’t scold her, though, and quickly went to the door, where she saw her three kids walk in with an older man. He was tall and well-built, with bushy brows and a short beard, giving off a certain air of power. It was her father-in-law. Of course, more importantly than that, It was one of the elders of the clan and a C-grade at that.
“Greetings, elder,” Deliah bowed as the man walked in with her kids.
“No need to be so formal, Deliah,” the older man smiled.
She raised her head and saw her father-in-law look around the house while suppressing a sigh. Deliah did feel slightly embarrassed at the dilapidated state of her home, and she would have cleaned up if she knew they would have visitors. However, she also knew that the elder wasn’t holding back a sigh of disappointment but that it was due to his powerlessness.
One would think that as an elder, he would have the power to change things or help, but in reality, it was an empty title that barely did anything. A single word from a member of the Order of the Malefic Viper would supersede anything he ever said or did, and the rules of the Order were very clear that each family had to contribute on their own, not even allowing him to pay their required taxes.
He still helped where he could, but it was incredibly limited.
Deliah invited them all inside and prepared to get something to drink when a shiver suddenly went down her spine. She froze mid-movement, her entire family doing the same. In fact, throughout the whole clan, they experienced this at once.
An aura had fallen over the clan.
“Get outside!” the elder yelled as Deliah did just that, ushering her kids out with her. Right outside, she saw her neighbor Petria also rush out, holding her daughter’s hand. In unison, they stared up and saw what looked like the arrival of the apocalypse.
The sky had split open as space shattered, the entire world shaking. It was a sight reminiscent of what the clan had also seen a few years ago, and they all knew what it meant… someone powerful was coming. Someone influential.
Out stepped several individuals, and before Deliah had any chance to do or say anything, her father-in-law had already shot into the air along with eight other figures from different places in the clan. It was the nine elders, their only C-grades. However, they had not flown up to fight.
Instead, they stopped in mid-air, not far from the hole in space, as a single figure walked out after several who looked like guards. From below, Deliah could not see who or what had appeared, but words seemed to be exchanged, and only a minute later, a clan-wide order was given.
Every single member of their clan had to gather… for there was about to be made an announcement regarding their future.
There was no questioning this order, no protests. All they could do was to comply. Over the next several minutes, the entire clan gathered in the large central square of the clan’s main village. Women, children, men, young and old. Everyone was present as they stared at what happened in the sky above.
Out of the large crack of space had floated a large platform of gray stone with hundreds of people on it and what looked like a podium in the middle. Looking at the people there, Deliah recognized them. She had seen one before.
They were enforcers from the Order of the Malefic Viper. However, the last time she saw one, there had been only that one. But… here, there were hundreds. Every single one of them was a B-grade, capable of wiping out any of the small clans in this entire section of the Great Planet. What’s more, there was the leader of this group. A dragonkin with black and dark green scales radiating power far beyond any of the others.
She had heard of these beings. It was a Malefic Dragonkin, a being closely connected and always blessed by the Malefic Viper himself. It was also this man who was the origin of the aura that had frozen the entire clan.
Why is someone like that here? Deliah asked herself as a shiver ran down her spine. Had they done something wrong… had some idiot provoked the Order of the Malefic somehow.
“Did… did your father-in-law tell you anything?” Pietra, who stood beside Deliah and her kids, asked in a worried tone.
“No… he didn’t know or had even heard anything either,” Deliah shook her head and answered in a low whisper while not taking her eyes off the platform above.
“Then what do you think is-“
“Shh!” a third person shushed them, Deliah agreeing that staying silent was probably best. To attract attention was not something anyone wanted, and while Deliah was curious, questioning out loud wouldn’t help anyone.
On the platform above, the dragonkin that seemed to be the leader stepped forward.
“Today, we are here to celebrate a joyous occasion. A change in your way of life. The sole disciple and Chosen of Grand Elder Duskleaf has laid claim to the Willowood Clan from this day onward,” the Malefic Dragonkin said in a voice that echoed so loud every person heard it.
Deliah was even more confused as she heard this. Why was some Chosen in this backwater mining clan, and why would they claim it? Was there something they didn’t know?
With a wave of his hand, the Malefic Dragonkin summoned a sea of gemstones that quickly gathered to form a rectangular gateway before stepping to the side.
Everyone kneeled as the gateway activated. Even the Malefic Dragonkin went down to one knee as they prepared to welcome someone clearly recognized as their superior. In unison, the entire crowd also kneeled, with some even kowtowing entirely. Deliah naturally did the same, keeping her stare firmly directed at the ground.
“All welcome, the honored Mistress Dawnleaf!”
A new aura appeared at that moment. One clearly amplified by the platform above.
“A high elf…” Pietra muttered beside her, feeling the sheer qualitative difference between a regular and a high elf.
However, Deliah hadn’t even noticed the high elf aspect. Instead, her head had whipped up due to the sheer familiarity of the presence of the person who had just stepped out of the gate.
She was a tall high elf, wearing a white dress with minimal jewelry. Deliah only really looked at the face of this elf, and despite the distance, she recognized her… even if a sliver of doubt still remained.