Leaving the two workers to their job, Euca decided to take a look at this rhopis’ cage. Their conversation had grown too ...banal. He didn’t care about what gailen was the best. Or who was frisky with whom. It was not his business. Although speaking of not-his-business, the brown-haired one had been looking at him too much. Well, like the man said, fair enough. So... rhopis’ cage. Yes. Rhopis’ cage.

From their conversation, it must be some kind animal — a troublesome one at that. Was the park holding an animal-themed fair, then? That was ...interesting. When was it though? He should bring Leo and Clar again when they opened. That’d be fun.

Not even a minute walk, he arrived in front of what should be the rhopis’ cage. And it did really looked like a cage. 

Wooden planks, almost four times his height were erected in series almost like a blind. Between each planks there was just a little gap, sized a finger-width maybe two. The structure was embedded deep underground with a curving arc — parabolic on the top. He knew now why Ron and Lud were saying that they were lucky not have to build this cage. It absolutely looked tedious. Only half of a full circle had been built and the two people who were building it were shouting like there was no tomorrow. 

“A bit to the left, hold it, hold it. HOLD IT!! Isaac, you dimwit what did I tell you?”

“Shut it, Jeff. It’s close enough!”

“No, it isn’t you bastard! I told you to get a damn good look at the marking. Ogre piss, you lumphead. This one needs to be freaking precise. Don’t you get that? Freaking precise.”

“So you’re the boss now, huh? Three levels on [Supervisor] and suddenly the guy, the guy think he’s know everything. What the heck Mr. Carr saw in him anyway? Stupid tillermud.”

“What did you say?”

“I said tillermud you freaking digger. Don’t act you know better than anyone else in here just because you—

BAM!

What the? What — what was happening? 

“Say it again, I dare you.”

“Pah! Know your place you Tillermuds!” the punched worker, Isaac, rose up, pulling his fist to clench. Step by step he staggered toward the first man, the one Euca eavesdropped as Jeff. The man took a long look at his fellow worker, his brow furrowed, his chest raised — he was furious. Which was understandable. Even In his short twenty-something years even he could recognize slur when it was spoken. 

The contempt, the disdain, the belittling, they were the same everywhere. The moment that Isaac guy spoke that word —  that ‘tillermuds’ he inadvertently shook his head, the whole ordeal was like an incoming trainwreck. Obvious, self-fulfilling, and most of all, stupid. 

He could see him —  Jeff. His knuckles were pale — white, his body stiff, his breath heaved. This obviously going to end badly. And true to his not-so-much of a prediction, only a heartbeat later, he found himself cursing his own mouth. Why? Well, because he was right — Isaac charged.

Almost in slow motion, the short-cut-haired man sprint. His staggering disappeared, replaced by the momentum of running and quick bursts of adrenaline. It did not hold a candle to Clar and Mr. Telin, fight though. That one was shadows, blitz, and incarnation of speed. Something that only he saw in a movie. This — this supposed charge was not even a tenth of that, his speed almost pathetic. It was like watching a biker bike at quarter speed. Faster than his running speed sure, but not something that his eyes couldn’t perceive.

BAM!

He winced. Instead of avenging himself, the man was punched back, no, not punched back. That’d be less embarrassing. Instead he ran straight, nose first, to the other’s fist. 

“BASTARD!”

Isaac jumped. Bruises and broken nose seemed to not matter to him anymore. Euca took a step back.

The rest was kind of blur. There were murmurs, shout of surprises, then silence that lasted for a half of minute before exploding to noise. Like him, the workers around had turned into onlookers. Inching closer, forming a wide circle. 

The moment the crowd moved was the moment he walked — away. Inching to the edge, slow and measured. Steady. He kept one of his eyes half-opened. Peering hard against the crowd. It was obvious by now that the crowd was growing by each second. People from the other sides of the clearing or even the park itself must have heard the commotion and clamoring toward it. 

He spared several quick sorries as he pushed against them; bits of ‘excuse me’ and the like. Understandably, some were throwing looks at him. Likely wondering why he was distancing instead of seeing whatever the hubbub was. Well, to that hypothetical questioner the answer was simple. He could see it. The whole ordeal wasn’t just bad. It was ugly and growing by the minutes. Already he heard shouts about who was right and who was wrong been loudly debated. And it wasn’t as cohesive — as alike he’d prefer it be. Instead, people were taking sides. Spewing taunts disguised as bets. Everyone seemed to have an opinion. Opinion which they fully agree on. Even though common sense dictated that the Jeff guy was in the right, more than a third — almost half of the people he had passed was either blatantly supporting or trying to justify Isaac’s conduct. Saying Jeff shouldn’t be too uptight or he was too young to be a supervisor anyway.

It was chaos through and through. 

Then it suddenly ended. Silence. People stopping. The shouts fell, leaving murmurs. He wasn’t sure what had happened but he knew that he needed to move now. 

He recognized the calm before storm when he saw it.

“Damn tillermud!”

He looked at the sky — at a stone hurled and cringed. So that was. What he had feared the most had come true. Jeff won.  

Isaac probably had either passed out or broke his ankle or something that he couldn’t fight anymore, not important. The point was, the loss of one party, had finally ignited the volatile black powder. He almost could imagine it, one of the guys — it always a guy — threw a stone straight to Jeff’s back, leaving him cold. 

“...[Invisibility].”

He ran.

Just three seconds he was running, the only onlooking — the only spectating status quo fractured. Words like halfwit townies, tillertrash, and what he guessed as allusions to less than hygienic monsters and animals were flying around. Then shouts. Then punches. Punches which turned into other reciprocal punches of equal or more force. Then kicks descended. Haphazard construction items like planks, broken or whole were swung around, hammers used as weapons, and for all the ever-loving god, one of the men even use a cart as some sort of battering ram. 

No more than a half of a minute since the instigators ended their fight. The crowd had boiled to a full-blown brawl. A brawl that rapidly spreading.

Damn. Damn. Damn. Come on people! He was just a passerby here for god sake — WHOA, he managed to duck. A stone passed where his head used to be. He winced. Apparently, the downside of being invisible was quite similar to the upside; no one could see you. Although it was arguably better — better than his head intentionally chucked at.

Diving through boxes and crates, he crouched on one half-erected stall. Looking up to the increasingly capricious airspace. So far he was halfway to the way, way left. The unmarked line where rows of building and what-supposed-to-be-buildings-but-could-not-anymore-because-duh ended. Looking around he saw a way out, a place where the crowd seemed to thin. That and a bit of luck might be his ticket getting out of here. Damning Russel and his teapot, he begged every Gods there were as he— 

—sprinted. 

Longest lung, farthest step, greatest leap. He dedicated almost all of his cognitive power to speed and finding the safest route; the one with the shortest distance and had absence of nails or hammers or whatever sharp things that scattered laying. Where there were no strays stones or planks thrown about. Where the structures that bend at odd end. He leaped and fro following the imagined route — the one that he hoped his straight sprint wouldn’t lose its momentum.

At this point, uncanny, suspicious sound of someone running invisibly could go to hell. The riot was as loud as it was. People weren’t going to pay attention at a wood piece suddenly kicked without any sign of wind. Also, magic and skill were a thing. So yeah, he didn’t really need to care about that right now. 

As he almost stepped on tip-sided nails, he began to wonder when it went wrong. Surely it wasn’t his fault. This — this exploded keg of kerfuffle wasn’t how he, sorry, anyone would like their vacation ended up. From the fight, it was obvious that there was some kind of demographical tension. Likely mix between racial and xenophobia motivated by economic envy and/or class divide. Which was which, what about what exactly, he didn’t know. But safe to said whatever it was had been simmering for quite some time. Otherwise, a simple punch from a stupid, stupid man wouldn’t end this badly.

“Damn *huft* Damn!”

Cursing (and panting) as he arrived on the relatively safer part of the clearing, he let himself caught breathes. Good breathes. Twice. Twice he needed to jog unprompted today. And needless to say the second one was way, way, way worse than the first. 

Throwing himself to the ground, both feet stretched, he ignored the grass roughing on his calves. The itches could take a hike. He was too tired. Too tired to care. All he managed, in his sprawled-sweating state was a gander at the sky. A still cerulean blue from the indifferent weft and weave of the grand illusion. Not one cloud he had seen. And yet, as if mocking him, on his peripheral vision, just under-downer of his eye, a trailing smoke slithered. One then two then three then so many he refused to count more. The white with shades of brown colored the sky like it had bled. The crazy mob must have burned some of the structures. Insane.

Minutes passed, and by now, he could feel the adrenaline staved down. The itches, particularly the one that came from the grass on his forehead was starting to become a bit much. So he stood up, watching as nothing somehow moved the grass to bend. Huh, his invisibility was still on.

BAM! 

BAM!! 

BAM!!!

What was now— of course, he winced. They burnt the places so what was collapsing the others? One of the structures, the one that both of the instigators built —the ropis’ cage was collapsing. He watched as one by one, planks by planks, it fell down like dominoes. One of them even had been offed from its base, uprooted by the foundation sides out. The one next to it, the one which bore the brunt of the previous one collapsing, snapped midway, couldn’t bear the other’s weight. He saw it repeating with the third, with the fourth until everything but three planks was knocked down to the ground. And almost like a clock, cheers were shouted. As if the downfall of that cage was some kind of poetic justice for the crowd — sorry, the mob. Likely they were celebrating how the tyrannies of far distant masters forcing them to build complicated stuff had ended today. Maybe. He didn’t know. He wasn’t those — those lunatics. 

Instead, what he did know was basic crowd psychology — that after spouting that much-undeserved cheer they were supposed to be more riotous. Like those sports’ supporters who burned a bus because their team lost some kind of stupid match. Fueled by euphoria and mad groupthink, the crowd should have spread, carrying torches and destroying more properties. Instead what he saw was ...nothing. Hush had fallen. Quiet.

Silence.

“I don’t like this...” 

And true. He didn’t like it at all.

“Fools.”

It said. No. He said. There was a light timbre, airy, musical quality that almost ...masculine from the voice. Like the old woman — Naya, Euca could hear as if the word was spoken besides his ears — whispered.

However instead of her indifference, her experience-justified -ism, this one was more. More than a simple irk, more than a bit vexation. It vibrated with ...anger. Deep, bubbling, and a second from being unsheathed.

He trembled. 

“Humans!”

It echoed.

“When your kin came here eighty and five seasons ago mewling like frits, your claws broken by the darkness spawn himself, we helped you, did we not?”

“DID WE NOT?”

“When your elders couldn’t muster defense like a proper race should, leaving your young helpless, we extended our hand, did we not?”

“DID WE NOT?”

“When you desired magic of the groves, when you built your bricks and stones and woods abound, when you dirtied — dirtied your hearth with irons, refusing refuge and hospitality to our kin, the one who was helping you, did we say something?”

“No! All we asked is here. A land. Sacred and Oath-bound and free of your bloodshed except when the covenant dictates —  when his forbidden name brought back their spawns to crawl once again in Capeo.”

“Yet this sun, THIS SUN and three daylights before our highest celebrations!!” 

“Humans…”

“...you dare.”

“YOU DARE!!”

“Ahhh!”

Euca was thrown back. His head— the shout, what — who? Who?? Didn’t matter… He — he must get out of here now. 

Why, why, why? Why was he crawling? How his hand wasn’t grasping anything? The ground — the ground! It was the ground. It felt like water — grasping water, the earth escaped, spread, the moment his trembling hand, his wet noodle knee tried to touch it.

He wasn’t involved in this dammit!

BOOM!!

“Good lord…”

Sideway, and still crawling, he saw it. Ocean of earth — of soil. Five, six, seven, meters high spurted like fountains and storms thundering in vengeance. In the sky, a reverse whirlpool formed. Wringing earth and grass and stones and worms and leaves. Branches, planks, and decayed logs fallen — whatever the earth was and had contained, whatever it hoisted upon its top. All were wrought into one big mass. Pulsating and spewing landslides to the one who tried to leave. To the one who tried to escape.

Still, it wasn’t enough.

There were, not many, but there were several people who managed to cling — hugging themselves either by luck or by power and skill into few structures that still standing. Pieces of planks, topside of a long table, stall with a good foundation, the big platform in the center, or simply boulders, the ones that too heavy even for the grand spell to lift to the sky as an individual thing. For them however, they’d find that their luck was something fleeting. As the sky rolled and tumbled, the ground in competition, shook beneath their feet. Like a crevice, it opened its maw, like quicksand, it sucked all and everything. Euca could see it, a middle-aged man with his arms flailing was plunged into a dark deep until only his nose allowed to remain aboveground.

One other however, managed to survive even that — that calamity. A lanky and leather-wearing someone was ...jumping. Skip and top, push and climb, the woman ran atop the scattered structures, using every yet-to-be sucked plank as a propeller to brought her away. His eye shrunk. She was heading here. Yet when he thought that the woman would manage, when she would pass the invisible line — the sky whirlpool undulated. Tentacling with speed, coiling like spring, he saw it struck — the sky whirlpool descended upon her, burying her with tens and tens of soil poured upon her body.

Saying that he wanted to escape — turning back right now, far far away and never looking back, would be the understatement of the year.

But across that line of buildings, by the docks and the island on the lake’s middle was where Apprentice was. Where Clar was.

He recast his [Invisibility].

And crawled toward the docks.