Chapter 22: Storm DeMorte

Sticks and Stones! I was more than just a little frustrated with myself for actually grabbing these two… individuals on a whim.

I was not going to suffer the Gult for some crime that they were very likely to be convicted of anyway. Still, it was a good opportunity for a verity of reasons, primarily because I could finish my nerve research… That and put my back up plan in place, in case Nathan or the military decided to not proceed… ‘appropriately.’

I sighed to myself and made sure that I put some of my better wards up. After making sure to anchor them appropriately I even interlinked them. This accomplished 2 very important things: first it made an expansive protective system that would be hard for anyone to navigate through without warning me. I doubted anyone would actually follow me, but it seemed prudent given what I was about to do.

Second, it quickly built up a powerful barrier very quickly. In the time it took me to eat a piece of fruit on a nearby tree, I had finished setting up a very good barrier.

Looking at my wards also reminded me of some of the places that I visited in my previous life. Wards like the ones I just created were typical of small towns with two or three very low powered mages, but the big cities had protective wards that could destroy 15 circle fireballs for days at a time. Unlike mine, those wards had been created as part of one giant spell that multiple mages – sometimes numbering in their thousands – would be asked to participate in created a giant city ward. Wards like mine were only good for stalling others in comparison

Layering wards was the cheapest and most efficient way to build up a powerful barrier. I neither had a large amount of food on me nor the knowledge on how to set up large, powerful wards without this method. Fortunately, I could be reasonably certain that no one would realize I was here. A 4 circle mage could disassemble my wards with brute force – knocking one layer off at a time – while a 10 circle mage would have almost the same amount of trouble as he would waste too much energy trying to break through in one try.

City wards, in comparison, were massive things that could absorb the huge chunks of iron thrown by siege weapons. If a city was big or rich enough, those same wards could be layered over time and reinvigorated with mana every year to keep them functioning for millennia after millennia. The end result was stalemate and annual raids that made war a sport for the powerful, city, dwelling nobility of my old world.

I was sure that it would be the same here, although there seemed to be peace right now, when the wars came, cities would only ever fall by one of the three traditional method. Besieged into starvation, taken by trickery, or negotiated. No one took a large city by storm as the monstrous wards, layered atop other monstrous wards, made it functionally impossible. Sieges were also a rare evens as almost no one would be able to maintain the sieges for long enough to actually take a city. Food was always a worry when it came to magic, but the amount of time it would take to starve out even one city was enough to muster 2 more armies to break the siege entirely.

I had caused plenty of havoc using other’s dependencies on those wards, but taking a major city had been something that eluded even the great ‘Bandit King.’ Minor cities, sure, but there was a simple definition for major cities that made them impossible obstacles. If the city’s wards would summon winds strong enough to block iron that weighed as much as 5 grown men from reaching the wards, they were considered unbreakable.

I was stalling though, enough reminiscing, there was torture to do.

I set up each man opposite of the other, one against a tree and another against a rock. They were both under a modified stun spell that would keep them unconscious for more than a day if I did not choose to wake them up. That said, I had less than a tenth of that time to actually question them before I had to get them back to the base.

We are leaving them ali– wait… oh that is why we… I have a recommendation.

No, we are going to go with the plan in my head unless… okay we can add in that last part, but we are not posing them, it might actually help their defense instead of hurt it.

Can we at least shove a stick up their-

NO!

Memories flashed through my mind and I felt Bella flinch back and whimper apologies.

I would sooner crush their stones, but that would be a good defense for them as well.

I understand, I am sorry.

We are sorry, you mean.

We sighed together before I took the lead and pulled out some of my stored bone mass. I used it to wrap both of their wrists and ankles. After hardening it into a makeshift set of irons, I turned towards the one I had braced against the tree.

It is said that there are a few basic rules of interrogating that most people seem to forget. That was not a problem for me of course, as I did not know any of them, so I never forgot. I also never got around to writing that part of my book, so I had never thought much about interrogating people. In my part life my name and face had been enough to make most people talk… that and they all seemed to think that I had a terrifying smile. I still do not know that that was about however, as I would just smile and do something casual like clean my nails with my knife and they would freak out and start talking all on their own.

Did you try giving them that same smile while taking off your pants?

On occasion, but you should know that.

…You sure your smile was more ‘scary’ than ‘perverted?’

…You do not stay sorry for long do you?

It is not in our nature, besides I can see your thoughts, which lets me know that you have already gotten over it.

Fair enough.

In my current state however, it would be a bit more difficult to intimidate anyone else. The local mender and daughter of the lord would still be seen as a child and thus nowhere near as in scary as an adult mage would be… I could turn into my old self or Janeen’s ‘friend,’ but there was no guarantee that one of them might not see through the illusion magic.

Though, a grown man would still be more likely to intimidate them than anything else I could think of.

Actually, I disagree. What would be more terrifying: A grown man with a creepy smile and no pants or a little girl who is casually breaking your bones and cutting off important bits?

…I am going to ignore that.

That is okay, the moment it left my half of our brain I realized that both were on the borderline of perverted

Yes and someday we must relocated you to the ‘decent’ side of that border.

I received a picture of a politely dressed little girl blushing furiously. I sent her back a mental image of that same girl, still blushing, as she held a pair of beautiful, naked, women by their collars. What she sent back… was not suitable for further exploration.

Nonsense! That last one was from idle thoughts in your brain. Or did you conveniently forget the whole ‘we’ thing again? I mean an obedience collar with-

Hush little Bella, it is almost time for pain and we are on a time limit.

True.

Concentrating on the man near the tree again, I walked behind him and carved a rune of ‘truth’ into the tree on the opposite side. After that, I tried to think of anything else that might help me ‘convince’ the man to cooperate. It took a minute, but I decided that leaving no trace I was here was preferable so I used illusion magic for the first time since the Lord’s Party 6 long cycles ago.

It took 3 tries before the illusion took. It would have been 2, but I did not cast a reflection spell to look at my appearance before I tried the first time. I foolishly thought I could accurately turn into my old self without it, but after the first attempt failed I thought better of it. After all, how many people need to cast an illusion spell to turn into themselves?

The third try was the key, but I had to add another experiment for these unfortunate – no, these ‘idiotic fools’ – to test out. This was because the failed magic had actually consumed the same amount of calories as the regular spell would, but it still failed.

Resisting the urge to sigh as I looked at my old form again. I went ahead and added a dark hood for menacing effect as much as deception. I had created the illusion based on what I should have looked like around age 40, meaning that, while I still had most of my muscles, I had far more lines on my face that in my youth. It should be far more intimidating than my little girl look, but I briefly wondered if another form would be better before deciding that I was overthinking it.

Fear is a powerful weapon, but it is completely dependent on perception. Even if resistance was pointless, the other person had to realize that before the fear could really take hold.

I shook my head and made sure that the illusion spell was moving with my real body correctly, especially for my facial expressions. Just before I dismissed the reflection spell I also noticed that my teeth were wrong. I could keep my teeth fairly health now, but in my previous life, that had been one of the few areas that the nobles had honestly beaten me – hands down. Only true nobility had enough money to hire or train mages to work on their teeth.

After thinking it over for a minute, I decided not to waste the mana and left my pearly white where they were and decided to wake up the tree fool… who I then decided to call Ratface, partly because I wanted a more solid label for him, partly because his face reminded me of a rat.

As Ratface started waking up, I called forth the spell I created accidentally a while back. I had been trying to gain a better control over my nervous system, to let myself react faster, even without using my internal energy. Instead, I managed to learn how to send a pain message through to my brain from every nerve I touched. I never managed to use mana to improve my nervous system too much, but I did manage to create a base for a pain spell.

Not that anyone outside of the academic part of magic sensitive portion of humanity would fully appreciate this, but the act of building a basic pain spell was something that had eluded humanity since… the beginning, as far as I knew. Almost anyone knew how to cause pain or cast a spell to create pain and some people could even cast a splash spell that directly created pain, but no one had a systematic spell to cause pain without an injury.

I did. Although, Ratface did not appreciate it in the slightest. Fortunately, I remembered to create a sound dampening ward at the last moment so that I did not have to listen to the full volume of his screams. “You have a good heart.” I announced, as the spell wore off and left him gasping for air. I had enough control over my vocal cords to deliberately deepen and mask my own voice without magic. “Not a pure one mind you, but one healthy enough to take a few days of this without giving out.”

Actually I was lying, but it was not a time for a lecture on the harmful effects of traxico smoke. He exercised regularly enough as part of basic army training, but they still had a very poor diet and the smoke had compounded that issue to make them weaker than they could be. Still, it was a little fun to see Ratface squirm as his mind caught up to the situation.

“Who in the 12 are you? How did-?” I was surprised by the power in his voice, Ratface here was clearly very important, in his own mind, at least. He was not very fast on the uptake either as he belatedly discovered his makeshift irons as he tried to stand up and fell flat on his face. He stared at them for a few moments afterwards too, clearly refusing to believe his fate.

So I decided to help him with another pain spell. His screaming was shorter this time, as I went with a less powerful version of the spell, but it seemed to make my wards vibrate all around. I noticed and briefly wondered if he did not have some hidden magical talent, but that was impossible. No one could reach his age and not have manifested some form of magical control.

Plus, I had checked with my own talent and his mana pathways were not nearly developed enough to signal a mage – nor were either of them burn outs.

For now I ignored it and concentrated on the creature writhing on the ground. “You hurt someone last night.” I told him. “You will tell me everything about what you did and why.”

Open ended questions were better for information, they would let his brain start catching up to his situation and give me more time to analyze his answers, instead of thinking of more questions.

“Did that Blue-born lesser-souled’s father send you?” I kept watching him with a blank expression and said nothing, but my mind was twisting in confusion. Blue said to be the symbolic color of the deceiver, so I at least understood that, but lesser-souled? How was it that some magicless fool had the spine to say that? Even John, for all of his faults, had not been arrogant to suggest that his soul was somehow superior and he at least had magic.

Of course, I was assuming that the insult had the same origins as my previous world, but I could work that out later.

I sent another pain spell into him and let it work on Ratface’s nerves for a little while before it dissipated and I let his underdeveloped mind come back from the land of pain. “You should know that no one ‘sends’ me anywhere,” I said coldly. “Now answer the question: what did you do last evening? Make sure that you leave nothing out.”

“Go multiply with yourself!”

I only barely kept myself from twitching and showing a smile. Who would expected humor in a situation like this? A sadist.

There was an uncomfortable amount of underlying rage in that comment which surprised me. We would have to talk about that later.

“Do you see where you are?” I asked him. “We are in the middle of the woods, where I can kill you and no one will find your remains for whole cycles.” I was going to say more, but apparently the idea of not being cremated was what actually kicked his mind.

His eyes widened as I stopped speaking and a look of mixed horror and revulsion came over him. “Y-y-you cannot do that! I-I am a noble you ignorant-”

That was as far as he got before I let my killing intent wash over him. I knew how it would feel to be in the presence of someone so much stronger than you, to feel helpless, but this one was actually being somewhat protected by his ignorance.

His family had likely made some bad financial decisions and had been forced to intermarry into a non-magical merchant family. It would explain the sense of entitlement, as well as the lack of magical ability. This, unfortunately (not really), meant that I had to make his situation even more abundantly clear.

“Clearly you misunderstood,” I said, let my voice change from cold to deepest winter I could manage. “You will die right here and now if I so desire, but before that becomes a possibility you will answer my questions or…” I leaned forward, “You will spend the last few days of your miserable existence in pain so great that you will wish I merely cut you up and left you to rot instead.” While the fool processed that for a moment, I leaned back and created a knife out of bone behind my back.

“Do try to think quickly,” I told him nonchalantly as possible, “I do prefer to carve bones in the dark.” I held up the knife, higher than normal because of the illusion spell, which I had deliberately made longer and rougher looking than I had to. I did not add tool markings or any specific level of detail because of the low amount of light, but he still got the message and began telling me everything.

Ratface’s real name was O’bal and his friend behind me was Cam. They, according to Ratface, had been in a drinking contest with Janeen’s Stark. It was not a friendly contest and after the threat of another blast of pain, Ratface revealed that they had lost badly.

Ratface had tried to bluster and lie about the contest, but I quickly reminded him that I did not want to hear his nonsense. The truth was that Terrick had asked them to make sure he was too drunk to do anything with Janeen. After they both were beaten in said contest, they staggered out in shame and met up with their leader, who directed them to the back of the facility.

Ratface then began another round of justifying around this time about how he and O’bal had been too drunk to recognize what they were doing until they had already gone too far. I only resisted the urge to kick him because of my illusion spell.

According to him, their friend and leader, Terrick, had them carry a rolled up object through the forest at night and they, being such good – drunk – friends, had obliged him for a little while before the object started moving and screaming.

They, clearly knowing nothing about this previously, had dropped the now very angry – very naked – Janeen on the ground, who promptly swore to have them all castrated. Afterwards, they had gotten into a fight and Terrick, who had just planned to dump her naked somewhere, went insane and beat her to death. Ratface and O’bal had tried to stop him, but Janeen had kicked O’bal in his “O’bals” and left Ratface to try and deal with an insanity fueled Terrick.

As far as made up on-the-spot lies go, Ratface was quite accomplished. So I left him to scream in agony for some time while I watched my wards ripple in response. I found myself wondering if I was affecting them with my anger, or Bella was as her anger had abated just enough to make her feel guilty when hearing screams.

It was a slightly unnerving effect – like someone was trying to pick at my wards – however, that was pushing my paranoia a bit far… Still, I took the liberty of rearranging parts of my wards and adding a few more lethal deterrents. Someone once told me there was a word called overkill, but I disagreed.

After grinding on Ratface for a little while longer and getting different versions each time I asked, I hit him with another stun spell and make him unconscious again.

Why are we bothering with this again? It is good stress relief, but I did push us here because I was angry… which also brings up the question of: “Why did you not stop me?”

I know how this is going to end Bella and I wanted both of us to remember what happens when we lose to our emotions. You have to remember that we chose this, no one else.

…What do you mean? DeMorte?

I mean that hearing from others that someone is guilty is different from hearing it from them. We will be traveling around for an unknown length of time after this Bella – in fact I would prefer leaving within the next few days, if not sooner – and someday soon, we will have to kill someone. You need to be prepared and willing to face the Guilt when that happens.

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Are you going to kill them just to make sure that happens?

Why so quiet Bella? The anger finally run dry? Do not worry, I would not want for us to go through the [i[Guilt[/i] unless other methods had failed first.

…That was why you encouraged me, it was not to get payback, but to make sure that I was prepared to take a life in cold-blood. To make a failsafe.

Yes, but pain and the other experiment are awaiting too, so lets continue.

Wait, how did you hide that? These days we share most of our thoughts and I only have trouble when you start thinking about memories from before I was born.

Here.

I visualized the memory of Anton explaining how to hide my thoughts from the Nalks and let Bella digest that as I turned towards… No-Balls.

I also pulled out a spoiled avotato from my robes. I had snatched it from a small pile in the fort and wrapped it inside a fold in my robes that I had subsequently tied off. It was disgusting, but I used more mana than I originally intended to. I still had large reserves of mana remaining, but I had never managed to put on enough calories to use it continuously. Thankfully, our mana roots spell did not give us any idea of what it tasted like.

I really needed to gain some weight, but this body was just not ready for it yet. Lilith seemed to be the order of the day, phase, and cycle for Bella’s body build and it was partly because of my own modifications. Thicker bones, muscles, and the everyday calorie consumption that came with my various experiments and modifications meant that I ate almost as much as a full grown man on any given day.

No-Balls was not Ratface. Where Ratface had been overly talkative, No-Balls was only a little more talkative than Mathalaus himself. Maybe he talked more with friends, but trying to get him to answer questions could be compared to pulling healthy teeth.

He was also less self-righteous and justifying about what happened, especially about the why.

“Beautiful wild woman. Always wild, thought she would be hurt. Hurt, not broken, not killed. Hated her tongue, always insulting, I just wanted to make her hurt because of it.”

His speech was annoying, but was slightly less offending than Ratface, who clearly did not care for anyone other than himself. No-Balls here actually looked ill when he talked about seeing what Terrick had done, admitting that he had taken a potion to sleep tonight. After confirming that the potion was still trying to do its work on him, I put him back to sleep.

I had once heard of a kingdom where the criminal intention was considered with the same weight as the victim, but I was not that type of person. I got the feeling that No-Balls was the type who bottled up rage and let it explode out later, understandable, but I did not feel inclined to let him go.

Everyone has a story, everyone has a life that matters. In an ideal world, no one would get hurt or hurt others, but that ideal world would never be created because of human nature. That knowledge had led me to a simple truth about talking human lives: We all have the right to end a human life, along with a responsibility to just how serious that act is.

That said, I could and would change how someone met their end if I felt it appropriate. In No-Balls’ case, I just made sure that his ‘fail-safe’ was less painful.

I knocked No-Balls out again with the stun spell and ignored the feeling of unease that Bella was emanating. She had many adult mannerisms and thoughts because of her slow merge with me, but she was still a child in the end. Part of her thought of what we were doing as a justice against an evil, but killing someone was nothing more or less than killing them.

The storm is not evil because it floods the fields and we would have to be more like a storm in the future. We would be more of a force of nature than a normal person.

We are human though, why do we have to become something else?

Because of the Guilt and the Nalks and who we are!

I thought the purpose of learning to fly in that previous place was to learn to be flexible, to CHANGE who WE are!

We will change, we will change into something that they cannot stop, something they cannot control or predict. We will become the storm that destroys their best laid plans.

I touched No-Balls’ head and created the first failsafe. He would feel next to no pain, but he would suffer in his own way if they did not hang him first.

No mercy Bella. You have to always be ready to go directly through the fire if you need to.

First a storm, now a fire, WE ARE PEOPLE! HUMANS!

I did not say we were a fire Bella.

I moved over to Ratface and touched his chest.

The past few cycles with the modified humans to the north and the more resent experiment with Dras had shown me how easy it was

Th-This is not right- you know it is not right!

I heard from some gods that there is no right or wrong. Life is war, it just shows us who remains Bella… Besides, we will still need to find Terrick so please do not try to back out now. We are the same person you know?

No, I can choose not to be you I-

No you cannot Bella, a few isolated memories are not the same as actual experience, you will understand soon enough though.

I sent my memories and experiences through Bella as I tried to concentrate enough to perform my last experiment in the Entrials area.

First, I touched Ratface’s arm and tried to use the mana roots spell. The spell went in fine, but stopped for a moment at the surface as I tried to pull out nutrients from his body. I grimaced and concentrated, but the flow was not only blocked, but he seemed to be resisting it somehow.

Gripping a little tighter, I dug my nails into his skin until he bled, at which point my mana roots became much more effective. Of course, I was still having trouble for some reason, but I chalked it up to trying to absorb a living creature. Dead animals were no problem, but the live ones obviously felt pain when I tried to test it on them, so I decided to limit that type of experimentation for Bella’s sake.

Standing up I realized that Bella was almost done dealing with those memories and would be giving me a mind-full soon, so I quickly moved onto the second stage of the experiment.

I stood up and created my mana roots while I was not touching him. The ‘roots’ themselves actually came out looking like evil little black snakes to my third eye. The fact that came out of my fingertips was also creepy, but the results of casting this spell were completely unexpected.

I sensed a huge burst of magic to my side and felt a flurry of spells rip apart the inner layers of wards. I barely had time to warn Bella and summon my internal energy before a random man rushed out of the nearby woods, giving off a monstrous amount of mana and killing intent.

* * *

Undisclosed location near the royal capital of Zootrofi:

A few minutes later:

“You failed.” He stated coldly. Staring down from his deliberately set chair, Rapier could feel his condescending judgement overriding his perverted desires.

Not for the first time, Rapier thanked the gods for her mother’s patient training on how to deal with such men. Most of the Royal Magician’s Corps were male and expected to father children in between missions so she had expected more than the few gazes that tended to follow her, but there were 2 obvious reasons they did not. The first was because of a professionalism that surprised her, they knew that their lives might be in her hands one day and treated her like such.

The second reason, however, was Rapier herself. Most of the men here were nobility and expected their women to be both powerful magical and pleasantly plump. For someone like her, whose family was neither a poor peasant working the dirt nor a rich merchant, it was an odd idea.

The ideal noble woman was apparently a few sizes bigger and a few stones heavier than Rapier – whose name had actually been changed upon joining the Corps to better fit her – and only some males in the Corps were polite enough to not state it. With only some like the implacable Zotra actually taking an interest in her.

The current fool she was speaking with was Kraus, an outright fat man who seemed to have forgotten how to exercise. His bloated mass would be useful on an actual battlefield, but if he gained a few more stones in weight, the Corps would have to transport him there in a wheelbarrow.

The fact that he seemed to prefer more ‘compact’ women like Rapier had only made the man that much more disgusting to her. He was also a fool in every area except rumor mongering as he would frequently berate her over small mistakes she made, just loud enough for the few servants to hear before spending time talking more quietly about her mistakes and what she should have done instead. If his advice was ever helpful, or the mistakes easily avoidable, she would not have cared, but it quickly became obvious why he changed his volume.

She once overheard a new servant asking “How is she still here?” and realized how quickly it would become “What is she doing with him when the room goes quiet?” and although the more experienced servants knew this routine well enough to ignore it, the rumors were still spreading.

It was the one time she seriously wondered about whether or not binding servants with magic to keep them loyal was the way to go after all.

Since then, she had suggested and negotiated a second reviewer to always be present when she was presenting a report.

“I made her the offer and she has to consider it herself. The initial contact, evaluation, and presentation of the offer after I found her a good match was my mission and I succeeded in all of those accomplishments.”

“Before you were all but thrown out the next day, by some newly titled Lord of a backwoods area too!” Kraus announced, his face twitching unpleasantly as it seemed to be on the edge of changing colors – from his raging red to his blue outrage. “You failed in your ever-present duty of making sure that the Royal name does not look weak! Besides, your real mission was supposed to be there to impress one little girl, that was it! By your own report the girl is a genius and we know that she was already considering joining one of the churches, a fact that you might have made irreversible! What would you like to say about this my Lady?”

I would like to ask you to get a little angrier so that your heart would give out Rapier thought viciously, resisting the urge to shiver at his ‘MY Lady.’ It had taken more time than expected to find and ask Zotra for her favor so Kraus had already cleared his time, waiting specially for her report. Otherwise she might have well been out on another mission before he noticed.

The politics in court had begun to move more quickly than anyone had apparently prepared for and the Corps was the King’s loyal tool if nothing else. There was a flood of spying missions that the women of the Corps would be expected to ‘help’ with at any cost. Such assignments were disgusting, but were both expected and less disgusting than dealing with Kraus.

The other reviewer, who was sitting behind her, did not seem to be friendly either, Druse was someone above her in rank, but she had no idea who he was otherwise, making him a very dangerous variable indeed. The man seemed to have a distaste for Kraus, but Rapier could only guess that from the reflection of him off a well-polished (and rarely used) sword behind Kraus’ head. Druse was not speaking up to cut the fool to size though, so he remained a mystery as far as Rapier was concerned.

“I performed my mission as instructed and I-“

She was cut off as the door opened. She knew the door would be warded and only someone of importance could get in so she stopped speaking to look in the reflection again.

It was Zeke. Her blood ran cold and Rapier had a horrible feeling rush through her. Zeke was one of the two watchers.

Watcher were the ones who were said to hold the map of the entire world and continuously update it with the positions of every army and royal agent. They were recluses who were allowed every measure of luxury at the cost of their freedom. They could only be visited by the King or his personally approved retinue and could only leave their secret rooms for war, sex, and death.

Only the first of which they were supposed to do unsupervised.

The silent shock only lasted a brief moment before Zeke spoke. “Number 0694 is dead.”

Rapier felt the room start to spin. Number 0694 was Zotra, she got Zotra killed.

She felt sick as the realization that the little girl that she tested might be so much more dangerous than they realized hit her in full force. No, you do not know that for sure, Rapier thought to herself.

For one of the second time in her life, Rapier heard Druse’s voice as he spoke up. “I take it you 2 were familiar with each other Rapier?”

Her voice seemed distant as she answered. “He was always trying to court me.” I always turned him away, but he did seem genuine when I asked him for my favor. I thought he would just ask me to spend the night, but he seemed to want an actual night out first.

She dimly noted that Kraus’s look of jealousy showed that he thought Zotra had already succeeded where he failed. “Wait outside until we are done and collect yourself my Lady.”

Rapier left without saying a word, they would be calling her back in any second anyway. She tried to mentally prepare herself and her personal suicide spell in case Kraus tried to declare her a traitor. Traitors had no life in the hours before their execution and there was no way that Kraus would not use the opportunity to thoroughly familiarize himself with her body.

She could already hear the sentencing being passed, stating that she had seduced Zotra to investigate her own failure and had gotten him killed in the process. It would be embellished of course, as no one would doubt that the sentence was harsher than the actual crime, but that would not stop Kraus from doing whatever he wanted until – IF – the charge was reduced.

She was a loyal soldier to the crown and had never hidden a detail or personal failure from her reports despite Kraus’ distasteful actions in reviewing those failures, now though, none of that would matter in the slightest.

It took less time than she thought before the door opened of its own accord and Kraus bellowed for her to enter. She felt like she was in a dream as she entered the room and the door swung shut behind her.

All three of them were behind the desk, with only Kraus sitting, while they had a map of the northern most sections of the kingdom laid out on the desk. “You will not reveal what you see or hear in this room today, do you understand?” Kraus questioned her with, to her shock, a completely serious face.

Rapier blinked and nodded before he snapped at her again. “Aloud woman! I want your oath on this.”

“You have my oath, I will not disclose what I see or hear here.” Likely because I will have killed myself to avoid your perversions.

Kraus took a deep breath, “You were late returning, was that because you went to see 0694?”

“Yes.” She double checked her spell, vowing only to tell them to investigate Bella before she used it.

“Did, in the course of your meeting with him, he tell you where he was heading next?” Kraus stared intently into her own eyes and as the words registered her mood rapidly changed.

“What?”

“Concentrate!” Druse ordered “Did he tell you where he was going? Did he give you any hints as to when he would return? Anything?”

“He…” Rapier was at a loss for words, part of being in the Corps was a soul-bound crystal that shattered upon death and sent the information back to the watchers. “He said that he would be back by the end of the earth phase.” Are they testing me? Or did something happen to his crystal?

“Nothing else?” Druse pushed.

“No.” I told him where to go, not the opposite way around.

Kraus spoke up “Think very, very, carefully my dear, are you sure that there were no other clues on where he was going? Do you have any ideas, even if it is just a guess?”

“No.” She lied, before pressing on with a question. “Sirs why are you even asking, did something go wrong with his crystal?”

Kraus grimaced “That is none of your concern dear, I think you should leave this to us.”

Druse countered him though. “That is it? Just a few questions and you let it go? We can at least use truth magic on her.”

Rapier’s mind almost stopped working at that comment. It was illegal to use truth magic on the King’s servants unless used directly by the king’s investigators – an action that was rare to say the least.

“Rapier’s greatest fault is that she never lies to us.” Kraus dismissed, waving away Druse’s objection. “You can read her reports if you want to, she writes down everything except what position she prefers.”

Rapier made a neutral face and quietly left as quickly as she could. Her life could have been on the line so she did not feel guilty about lying, she was actually trained to do just that, but now she had the problem of how to direct the investigation to the proper area and the proper person without risk to herself…

As she walked back to her private room, Rapier felt her mind start to catch up to just how dangerous of a game she would be playing. She had only been in the Corps for 3 cycles and she had made it through the training thinking that nothing and no one would be able to touch her. The missions that she had been given after she arrived had been difficult, but they had not shaken her faith in herself or her training. Now though, she was just starting to realize how many people could actually hurt her and just how wrong she was.

She would also have to face the reality that the person she looked forward to seeing in the most in the Corps was now dead.

…She made it to her private room before the first tears fell.

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Thank you for reading,

Sir B_S.