First Contact

The settlement of Trest does not belong to Verve or Whorl. It has, until this week, managed to remain independent by being too small to be worth the attention of either faction. That changes when Auren arrives on Verve business from the north on the same day Vex arrives from the east for his own reasons. The settlement watches two champions walk into their space from opposite directions and waits to see what happens.

What happens is not a fight — at least not immediately. Auren and Vex have heard of each other in the abstract way that opposing forces hear of their counterparts. Meeting in person is different. Vex finds Auren more honest than expected. Auren finds Vex more coherent than expected. They talk for six hours in the back room of Trest's only gathering space, and the conversation goes to places that neither of them anticipated — not because they find common ground, but because they don't, and both of them are the kind of people who need to understand why.

They do not fight. They do not agree. They do not reach any arrangement or understanding that could be called productive. What they reach is something rarer and in its own way more dangerous: a clear-eyed view of each other. Auren leaves Trest with a more precise understanding of what he is actually protecting people from — and why it is harder than he lets on. Vex leaves with a question he cannot answer, and a refusal to admit that he cannot answer it.