When she was gone and deeper into the tent, D’Argen noticed that one of the leather cords had not made it back into her bag. He hated that stone. As far as he was concerned, it hated him right back.

There were not many things that interacted with the mahee at all, so the ones that did were easily remembered. This stone served to dampen the scents that came out when one of the gods opened their mahee and performed magic. Because each of the gods’ mahee was different though, they all had different reactions to it. Whenever D’Argen touched that accursed stone, even just a small pebble wrapped in a leather cord, he felt like his entire body weight doubled and like his feet were stuck in mud. It was horrible.

Even worse, he felt that weight inside his chest and deeper even, into the core of him, turning his mahee into a boulder that was hanging on the edge of a cliff, ready to fall at any second. It never fell, but the feeling was not pleasant.

 D’Argen ignored the necklace and moved to the side of one of the tent’s large entrances, able to look out into the crowd without being in it. Mortals that passed by easily noticed him and he felt their eyes like an itch at the back of his neck.

The problem was his mahee. It may not have been visible, but it drew attention to him even if he was not using it to release any scent. And then those eyes wandered down his body, making him uncomfortable as mortals looked him over from head to toe as if he was on display. He hated it, especially when some of those mortals turned away in disgust.

Due to his ‘self-imposed exile’, D’Argen looked a little worse for wear and a lot worse than all of the gods gathered there in their best robes. Even the workers looked neater than D’Argen. But it was only his mahee that drew the attention to him. Outside of that strand of magic that made the mortals take note of him, there was nothing extraordinary about his appearance. He had dark blue eyes that Lilian loved to comment about and long black hair that he wore in a high ponytail. His skin was tanned, he had a straight nose that lifted a little only at the end, and his eyes were long and narrow. Nothing special. If he was a mortal, he would be easily forgotten.

D’Argen’s official uniform as an Envoy of Evadia got torn to shreds centuries ago and his usual travel robes followed that same fate not long after. Because of that, he was dressed in a set of dark robes he purchased from a village in the Oltrian region a few months ago.

Not wanting to be on display, D’Argen turned away and walked deeper into Simeal’s tent. The cots at the back were all empty so he claimed one for himself. One of Simeal’s mortal staff came up to him, asking him if he wanted anything, but he brushed the woman away with a smile. Once alone, he closed his eyes and took in the sounds of the conference around him.

Without looking at the crowd, it was easy to enjoy it. He did not have to worry about that itch to run coming to him. One of the reasons D’Argen hated crowds so much was because he could not open his mahee and run through a crowd without killing every single mortal in sight. A more personal reason was that he preferred to be alone because he knew that he was too much for a lot of people. He was too fast, too loud, too annoying, too talkative, too friendly, too something else.

Fortunately, his three companions knew him well enough to keep him away from most such events and even serve as his shield in the cases where he could not avoid them. Now, with all three of them off on his orders, he only had the empty space at the back of Simeal’s tent as his sanctuary.