"They found Finley this afternoon, just outside the Bloodied Forest, dead." I lifted my gaze from the papers and the crimson surface and looked at the three men sitting at the table. There was a specific reason I had chosen this spot. I didn’t feel… anything from them as I wandered among the crowded tables earlier. There was no pain at all, neither physical nor emotional. Usually, I didn’t seek to find out if someone was in pain. I felt that doing so without an obvious reason would be extremely intrusive, but when I was in the crowd, it was difficult to control what I allowed myself to feel. There was always someone whose pain was so deep and clear that it turned their despair into a tangible entity, and I didn’t even need to open my senses to feel it – and that was something I simply couldn’t ignore and walk away from. They projected their anguish onto the world around them. I had explicit orders to ignore them. I couldn’t speak to anyone about the gift given to me by the gods, and I should never, ever cross the line and take action. Not that I always did what I was supposed to. Obviously.
But those men were fine when I opened my senses in order to avoid those who had been overtaken by pain, which was unexpected considering what their job was. They were guards from the Heights – the massive wall made of limestone and iron, materials mined from the Elysian Peaks. After the end of the War of the Two Kings, four centuries ago, the Heights included Masandonia, and all the cities of the Solis kingdom were under its protection. Smaller versions of the Heights surrounded villages, training grounds, rural communities, and some sparsely populated towns. What the guards faced and had to do on a daily basis often caused them greater and deeper pain than injuries, torn flesh, and broken bones.