Foxtails and Fairytales: Facades and Fables of the Phantom Prince

[Arc 9] Ch. 3 Warlock's Snare

[A/N at the bottom, with Discord information and updates. This is a much longer chapter please enjoy.]

Sebas

"Greetings and thank you all for joining us today." Even though she was across the room her voice boomed and was as loud and as crisp as if she were speaking right to me. "Some of you are familiar with me, and others may recognize my work that set me apart as a Magus, Analysis on the usefulness of Catalyst crystals. Or my more recent Publication, the importance of the Mages cube. Printed in the..." Magus Kallit began her noble monologue of 'look how great I am' in long hand, now that she had the stage and everyone's attention.

I note that she is wearing a blue dress and begin to scan the room. The colors people wear to these kinds of events usually denotes some kind of occupational specialization or political position. Blue was the color of the traditional mage, the ones that ascribed to the "Cube". Light blue with a stripe symbolized the Magic knights, most commonly it took the form of a cape with the stripe along the base going blue, white, blue. Alchemists wore white with a plant embroidered on it that usually represented the one they used most often. Warlocks tended to wear black and their emblem. And sorcerers, they wore red and white, and from what I could tell, nobody was wearing red, except for us.

Other things set their specializations apart. Like hats, ribbons, ties, or pins. The most common were pointed wizard hats of the elemental mages that had taken a fashionable redesign to match the outfit. A water mage would wear a blue hat, or a wind mage would wear a green hat. But that was more common among the men. The women wore a ribbon or sash, like a brown and gold accented ribbon for earth or a red and orange sash for a fire mage. But this time around fire mages had adopted orange so they weren't associated with the sorcerers.

I'm really bored with her speech, so I clearly zone out and look around the room for everyone's open declaration of war against the sorcerers. Wow, we are so unpopular. Speaking of unpopular, I yawned when I finally scanned back to the stage and found Magus Kallit glaring at my obvious disrespect for not paying attention to her self-important bragging. She openly shifted the conversation to passive-aggressively denounce Sorcery. I responded by yawning again with sleepy eyes.

"The second purpose for this event is to publicly introduce my apprentice, Princess Shannon Arledge." Magus Kallit pointed to a beautiful Elven girl by her side who was in a formal blue dress with more obvious influences derived from traditional mage robes than the magus.

"Greetings, thank you for attending this evening I'm..." Shannon began and when I sighed Julie elbowed me as everyone stared at my disrespectful behavior.

Good god. This woman! Not Julie... well yes, Julie. It took the good half of my willpower to not openly ogle her in public. I meant Shannon, she had the entitled demeanor of someone who had already won and everyone else just had to catch up. She stated that she was a Water Mage under Magus Kallit and was pursuing a place among the Magus through her power. She even casually announced how the Phantom Prince wouldn't even be able to ignore her charm. And then she curtseyed, inviting everyone to enjoy the evening.

I was honestly surprised that she didn't have ringlets and laugh in the haughty 'ho ho ho' fashion as she looked down her nose at you. But it's probably too soon to assume the best.

Meanwhile, I ignore her. I have Julie hold the briefcase and slap a talisman on it and say a command phrase that causes the case to shrink like my adventurer's journal and Julie's eyes to grow into the size of softballs until she glared at me.

"Nyah, If you could do that, why didn't you do that before the knights gave us so much trouble?" Julie hissed.

"What fun would that be?" I smirked as I stuffed the much smaller case in my back pocket. I casually notice the clapping and as the self-important hosts got off the stage.