Trust

Chapter 4

Grian had to think of someone from the Main World who he knew that he could invite. He first thought of his friends that he had from other servers, but he knew that most of them would probably be busy, and since none of them knew he was a watcher, if the hermits asked about times that they 'met up' when they didn't they would get suspicious. The next lot of people he thought of were the council, but that wasn't really going to work for multiple reasons. The High Leader was uncontactable and wasn't exactly someone they would invite to your birthday party. It was sort of the same for Lysabel and Gryff, though they were his friends they were also his bosses. For Tory, Hayden, Neferus, Kelin and Erin he didn't know them well enough since he often stayed with his four friends and those five normally stayed together. For Cirrus and Via, they were admins which meant that their faces were public knowledge, which would be hard to explain if he turned up with a council member. Everyone knew who Zyrex was so that definitely wouldn't work, but he did wonder if X might invite him. He couldn't invite Blaze either since people knew his face. Since he knew that people knew Via's face, he didn't bother with hiding his.

It took a few more moments of thinking before he remembered someone that he probably could ask. Astaria was someone who after fighting within the alternate reality he would consider a friend. She also had a player form so they wouldn't know she was a watcher. Even though she helped fight in front of everyone earlier in the day none of the hermits were there so they wouldn't know what she looked like anyways, though she did look quite different in her player form with the lack of white hair and she could also pretend to be an admin to through the trail off even more if needed. He had also learnt in the alternate reality that she was quite good at coming up with believable stories, which would be helpful for talking about all the times they supposedly hung out, though quite a few of those times he did end up having actual conversations with her.

He decided that he should try asking her, and if she couldn't come he could still tell the hermits that he asked. He headed into the Main World and ducked behind another alleyway. He had decided that he would go in watcher form since that was just more normal for him. After he left the alleyway and entered an area that was a popular place to meet up, he wanted to see if there were people there, specifically the admins and watchers to see how they were healing. When he walked through those who were there moved out of the way and did a slight bow towards him, there was a good mix of admins, players and watchers though so it seemed that Neferus had followed Astaria's instructions with the Dragon's Breath. He could feel the eyes trail him and he left the populated area, he didn't want to directly look at any of them since he felt somewhat guilty since he and the rest of the council weren't able to do anything for that first attack, and the second attack didn't even end in them defeating the attackers but they were pushed back instead. He then flew off into the sky.

Xelqua made his way over to one of the smaller end islands that were empty, it was positioned far enough away so you could just see the edge of the main end island. He decided it would be a good place to message Astaria so she could just teleport to him without anyone finding out. He typed a quick message:
Can you come to ~ ~ ~ I need to ask you something

Xelqua was expecting a simple reply, not for her to turn up right in front of her, she teleported a few blocks back from where Xelqua was standing which was lucky since he gave the coordinates that he was standing on, not that it would matter to much since the backup code would make them teleport a little bit but it was painful when it happened. "You know Xelqua normally wouldn't give the coordinates you're standing on to an admin to teleport to," Astaria said, her face pointing in his direction.
"Yeah, I realised that when you teleported a few blocks away. I normally do as well, I've already had the painful experience of Cirrus teleporting to my coordinates the first time I sent them," He said.

"So Xelqua what was it that you wanted to ask me?" Astaria asked.

He didn't know how to start his question, "Well..." he started, "So my birthday is in a few days, which I had totally forgotten by the way, and because we still want to have some fun they are throwing me a birthday party. Xisuma then suggested that I invite some of my Main World friends, which is the excuse that I used when I had to leave for watcher business. I can't invite anyone on other servers since they don't know about the watcher thing, the council members are either awkward to ask, their faces are known to the public or known to the hermits in Zyrex's case. Then I thought about how you have a player form and I was hoping you would act as one of my Main World friends?"

It took a few moments for Astaria to process everything, in her mind she was replying to both what she heard as well as the lip movements since some of the words got jumbled with the speed that Xelqua was talking. Xelqua was just standing there feeling very awkward. Since she hadn't said anything Xelqua was worried he overstepped. "Okay," she said.
Now it was Xelqua's turn to process what he just heard, he hadn't really expected a yes from her, but if he was being fair he hadn't actually thought about what she would say, "I do need to check on Dyneris but tell me the details," Astaria said waving bye.

Xelqua nodded even though she was already gone, at least he had someone for the hermits to meet now.

WC~ 1054 

A/N: We are going to pretend that I didn't forget to post this chapter yesterday :)