Cylus 3rd, 718
She could feel a deep-rooted agitation churning in her stomach. The fire came up to lick at the back of her throat, threatening to spew out in curses and wrath if this conversation continued on any longer. It wasn't the typical kind of conversation allowed by The Overlord, but he didn't seem to be making any moved to attempt causing it to cease. No, instead he sat at his desk, quietly smirking against the candlelight as the fight only blazed forward, words blistering and spinning out of control. It would barely even be a trial before the pair, locked in their word based combat, came to regret just about everything they were saying, but that didn't stop them in the now. A mane of black flared around the shoulders of one as she shook her head ferociously, her lips parting and allowing for her white teeth to glint in the firelight as she tried to form her rebuttal. So far, she'd taken on an air of education and nobility, and her appearance was quick to back up the claim. But it was problematic that she was fighting clean. Her partner in war was best described as a mess. His short, dirty, almost mangey locks were marred with ink that would surely be a pain to try and remove. His jaws were pulled wide, words always at the tip of his tongue. But his words were about as rotten and toxic as the teeth that were slowly decaying straight out of his skull.
No one in the Smarter Charts approached the pair, simply watching it all unfold. The workload in Cylus tended to decrease dramatically. People didn't tend to buy maps when they couldn't see the nose in front of their face, what point was there to travel? Similarly, scouting parties came to a complete halt leaving many of the scouts workless, angsty, and desperately trying to figure out how the whole drawing thing worked. Night in her first year of work had to suffer through a similar mess, but she'd been quick enough to realize that there was always work to be done for the keen. Others were not so quick, many not even realizing the plethora of tasks at their fingertips. So, they sought entertainment. Anything that could eat up their time and make the trial tick by faster. What better comical show than an argument between a stubborn idiot and an educated try hard. They were going around in circles, and apparently, they intended to stay that way.
"Why doesn't she just walk away," Night hissed, her agitation blatantly showing. Annalise, the only person in the shop Night could truly call a friend, glanced at her sympathetically. The knitting of her eyebrows showed a similar agitation and discomfort.
"Sometimes, smart people don't realize that walking away from an idiot means you won the argument. And an idiot will never back down, for better or worse..." Annalise sighed heavily as her expression almost turned mournful. "At this rate, no one is going to get any work done..."
"I can't even concentrate on the words in my own head, let alone this map, with their shouting match going on," Night huffed, almost snapping the quill in her hands with how tight her grip turned. Annalise nodded.
After thinking for a moment the woman turned to the half-breed. "Why don't you go get in the middle of them? You're a trained warrior, people are as scared of you as much as they respect you!"
"Do you really think that's going to work? We've already been over the fact that idiots don't feel fear," Night said, her smile completely bitter as she tilted her head towards the fight. They were screaming even louder now, trying to overpower the other with the strength of their vocal cords. Of course, this meant the strength of their linguistic powers was lacking in more ways than one.
"Then knock both their asses out. I wanna get this done before snooty mc tooty pants comes back and goes 'oh the humanity! This quality is for shame!' If he does that one more time I swear to you, I'm going to fight him," Annalise hissed as she motioned to the map sitting in front of her with quick jerky motions. It was honestly her best work yet, but judging from her face she didn't want to touch it with a quill till she could completely concentrate on it. Night had messed up at least two maps, finding herself randomly jumping at particularly vicious sounds. She'd spent arcs training herself to be stalwart so she didn't mess up during a fight. That should say enough about how vicious this fight, in particular, was starting to become. The woman wouldn't be shocked if they turned to fists soon, and that wouldn't be good for anyone.
"Fine," she sighed heavily, "I'll see what I can do. No promises that I'm going to be able to actually solve it." She turned once more towards the pair. She wondered how these things always ended up falling on her shoulders. The two started shouting even louder.
"This line right here is obviously a river," the woman with the black hair screeched as she pointed at the map sitting between the two. Yes, all of this had started because they had disagreed over the legend on a fairly old map. Night couldn't even begin to guess at what language it was and it was an area no one in the building had ever seen before. At one point Night thought maybe it was made up, some authors liked to make maps for their worlds. Others thought maybe it was as old as time itself. No one in the Smarter Charts could really say for certain, but it had originally been given to the pair currently arguing to be transcribed into something readable.
After a little while of silence, the two had started talking, comparing what they had. Certain lines turned into cliffs on one map while becoming rivers on the others. Mountains meshed with trees and there were some symbols that looked like words and the two had spent too much time arguing back and forth on what the maybe words had meant due to what they looked like in the scrips of other languages. They both spoke a wide array of different languages and only shared common and the native Etzori tongue, meaning that their argument went around in circles for breaks.
Night hadn't gotten the chance to look at the map for herself so she wasn't certain even what could be causing such a violent disagreement. "These are obviously cliffs," the brunet snarled. Night watched quietly for a moment. Neither one actually paid much mind to her, ignoring her existence completely as she stared for a moment at the map between them. They didn't notice as she picked up the map to look at it a little closer.
"Hey Anna, come here for a trill," she said as the woman just watched the madness.
"That looks..." She said as Night showed her the map. Night nodded quietly before glancing at The Overlord. He was laughing into his hands and had yet to actually notice Night or Annalise had stood up to try and intervein.
"That man..." She hissed under her breath, the picture starting to fill out in her mind. Now then, the only question remaining was how to stop the argument. She looked at the two wildly conflicting maps on the table. She blinked a couple times as a thought barged its way into her mind. Yeah. That would work perfectly.
In one grandiose action and grabbed the map and tore it apart. The rip finally got the attention of the two. They stared at her in horror, silence finally coming to the entire room. The words seemed to die in their throat. "There's no point in arguing anymore," she said with a shake of her head. "The map can't be ancient since the paper is too new. Look at it, the edges haven't even started to curl and the paper itself is pure white! Not possible for an old map. And it's not somewhere in Idalos so that makes it useless. Stop arguing and start copying those maps we got from Hildreth the other day. We need to make at least 20 before the season ends or else we're going to be behind when the travel season starts!" Her tone turned to one of sharp command as she eyes the two up and down. The shock combined with the strength of her voice caused both to sit down quietly. They didn't start working, but they were done arguing, so that was a plus. The rest of the shop immediately went back to what they were working on before interruption started. Even The Overlord turned to silence.
"Are you happy now?" She asked Annalise with a glare as the half-breed sat down at her desk and picked up her quill. "Now where was I?"
