Even in times of war, parties were still part of life for nobility.
They projected strength and security, broadcasting that they both had the resources and the safety to have leisure.
Yet this projection was not always reality.
One might hold the party because they are doing nothing but putting up a facade, to chase away the idea that they are small insecure people, that under their velvet coats and their makeup worth a year's food for a peasant, they were just people.
LOOK LOOK, LOOK AT MY WEALTH, LOOK AT WHAT I CAN AFFORD TO THROW AWAY.
While men and women fight on battlefields, giving their lives for the safety that these people took for granted, these lives that were just numbers on a spreadsheet to them, nobles gorged themselves, danced and gossiped.
He wanted to vomit, to-
“Sir Fomoria, How is the food?”
“Very good, thank you for asking, Sir Greenfield.”
“I admit, I hadn’t expected you to come. You are far from the social butterfly Sir Balor is.”
“Well, I can’t lie, I am here because Cynthia is a friend, and this is an excuse to bring Viviane to her.
And, I feel like this is the perfect time to enter into nobility properly. There is a time to hide away, and a time to make friends and allies.”
“Well said.”
“How have you been?”
“Well enough, there are certainly no issues with the food supply here, and we have wealth that couldn’t be spent in a hundred years.”
“As it is in most of the kingdom, except… no, I shouldn’t say that.”
“You are among friends, please, feel comfortable to speak your mind.”
“I’m sure you are already aware of the fields being burned and the blockades preventing citizens on the other side of this war from being fed properly. I hadn’t expected Rosewell, apologies, Queen Yggdra, to become so cruel. Perhaps her father was right to not want her on the throne, even I… Nevermind. I just wish I could help them.”
Harlan’s acting was better than one might expect, years of viewing people to understand what was supposed to be normal made it easier to put on a face than if he had understood these things innately in some sense.
Perhaps it wasn’t entirely natural, but he gave off enough of a feeling that he was being genuine.
The Duke brought Harlan over to another group of people.
A conversation unsaid, shifty eyes and odd looks, then Harlan was in.
“I was just having a conversation with Sir Fomoria about the blockades, and he thought it cruel that those on the other side of this war would be starved out by our queen.”
“Very unfortunate business.”
The man in front of him was a count under Greenfield’s banner, Harlan had prepared for this for a week, Balor drilled everything he was going to need into him.
“Harlan, this is Count Carten, a mover of sorts.”
“Good to meet you, I’m… well, my reputation precedes me I’m sure.”
“It does. And, I hope I’m not speaking out of turn, but I was under the impression that you were fiercely loyal to Yggdra, that you didn’t have a bad word to say about her.”
“I’ve never met anyone who I don’t have a bad word to say about. She’s changed, the crown might be too heavy for her. She never wanted to be queen, and perhaps in another time, she’d even be willing to step down. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t say these things, I hardly know you.”
“Nonsense, my family and the Greenfield Family have been close for centuries, and you are so close to Cynthia, we’re practically friends by default.”
“I suppose that makes sense. I’m worried about her, and Relly, the stress seems to be getting to both of them. I think she wants peace by any means, and I know what that looks like.”
“By any means doesn’t need to be something so terrible. Perhaps she should think about how to negotiate with the other said, traitors though they are, they served under her father.”
“Maybe, but she seems hellbent on destroying them, a threat to her legacy she calls them.”
Harlan tapped on his amulet in his pocket, sending a message to Adina to call him.
“Excuse me, I should take this. Where is the nearest quiet room?”
Duke Greenfield pointed him down a hall that was nothing but quiet rooms and restrooms.
Harlan closed the door and checked for anywhere that spies might try to listen in, vents and the like, enchanted to direct voices to listening stations.
He found the room clear, but still put up a veil.
“Bring the case. I’ll be in the guest room across from Cynthia’s, I’ll say that I’m feeling faint, she’ll take me to the room. Say you have a bag with supplies, considering your known paranoia and over preparedness, most people won’t question the size.”
“Where are you now?”
“A restroom on the other side of the ballroom from you.”
“I’ll be there soon.”
Harlan went out to join in the conversation again, then he heard the gasps as Adina faked her near collapse.
Cynthia carried her Viviane and left Sycamore with a maid.
“Harlan, Adina isn’t feeling well. She asked to rest, and for you to bring the supplies to the room.
I’ll be waiting at the door to lead you.”
Duke Greenfield stepped forward.
“I’ll have a servant go with you.”
“Thank you.”
They had come in a carriage, though they had also used gates to get the carriage there in a timely manner.
Naturally, the horses and the driver were both golems.
He grabbed a hard squared suitcase made from stonesteel.
It was a foot and a half deep, and four feet in each direction otherwise.
“Please, let me carry that.”
“Are you certain?”
Harlan held it as if it was empty, but the servant lurched forward when he tried to take it from Harlan.
“T-this is quite a bit heavier than I expected.”
“Refined stonesteel exterior for safety. I don’t want the bottles inside breaking.”
He tried to lift with his legs, to shove it, but it wasn’t going to move without the man throwing out his back.
Harlan picked it up again without issue, deactivating the gravity spell that made it so heavy.
“I could get more men, we could-”
“My wife doesn’t feel well, do not delay me any longer.”
Harlan made his way through the house, following behind Cynthia to make it seem as if he hadn’t memorized the floorplan already.
Balor had looked into everything that he could, and the Greenfields did look like something might be happening, but there was nothing that could actually be proven about any of them.
The best he could do was to know everything he could about the house.
The blueprints he had were costly, and they were a century old, but these noble castles didn’t exactly change much.
Harlan undid the latches and opened the case.
The woman inside had contorted herself no small amount, and her body had even been shrunk with fleshsculpting to get her small enough to fit inside of the case.
“Jas, how have you been?”
“Your brother said this would be easy. Just climb inside, we’ll have you out quickly. I thought I was going to suffocate in there.”
“You wouldn’t, because I put a spell in there to turn your breath back into clean, breathable air. I hope it wasn’t too hot inside.”
Her body popped back into place, water imbibing let her move in ways that would break the bones of other people.
“Where are we in relation to that office?”
Cynthia put her hand forward, giving a key to Jas.
“End of the hall, take two lefts, then go past the intersection, take one right, then one left, it is the door on your left with a large tree engraving and green crystals. This key will get you inside without setting off any alarms, but do try to avoid any patrols, and don’t doddle.”
“Hargrave, anything else.”
“No blood, we don’t know if he is a traitor yet. Just look through the drawers and if there are any pieces of paper in the fireplace that haven’t burned, take all of the ashes and put them in this jar.”
He ignored that she had used the wrong name, and that she was cringing at her misuse.
Harlan looked out the door before Jas went out, making sure there wouldn’t be any guests.
She went down the halls, her four foot frame hiding on the vaulted ceiling.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
He figured he would stay 10 minutes, less and it would look odd considering how protective he is, more and the topic of the party would shift to Adina and what was wrong with her, and that might draw more eyes to the hallway, making Jas coming back harder.
“I wish I could’ve done this myself.”
“Your daughter’s eyes are very pretty. I wish I had them, rather than these purple things.”
“I’ve always thought you had beautiful eyes.”
“You’ll make me blush.”
She just fiddled with Viviane for a time, making faces and sounds.
“So why aren’t you doing this?”
“Because Jas has been working under Balor.
I could learn the spells on short notice, but she has experience with these things.”
“With Balor? Isn’t he an investor and manager?”
“I feel like I can be honest with you. Balor is in control of the largest network of underground criminal organizations in Ragne.”
“Oh.”
“Is that it?”
“Crime is part of human nature, one cannot cut the head off, but they can be a better head than what was before. I’ve noticed a downturn in crime within the last six months, on paper at least, and we did find a lot of suspected criminals dismembered in what we assumed were gang killings.”
“How pragmatic.”
“You know I’m not what people consider normal, or moral. Oh, I think she pooped. You didn’t happen to bring any real baby supplies with you, did you?”
“Just hand her here, I have something neat to show you.”
When Harlan had gone to the ruins of his home, finding little more than materials left, he made a small and simple golem armor.
It didn’t need the bulky gems of his and the others, because it was just shifting inside of it.
He knew Adina wouldn’t be happy with him if he gave their daughter anything more.
So to clean her, he simply had the armor open from the back, when it turned to liquid, the unmentionables inside fell out, leaving the armor clean, and then a little bit of water magic to wash and dry her, and that was that.
“Oh, now I simply must get one of those.”
Harlan went back into the main room, opened the case, and reached into a secret pocket that was spatially distorted.
“I figured you would say that.”
“You know me so well.”
“I do.”
“I love you too.”
Adina took Viviane.
“I know he was a child when you and him were together, so I hope that doesn’t mean anything.”
Cynthia just laughed, and Adina laughed with her.
Jas wasn’t laughing however.
She got inside of the room without issue, and she cleared the drawers like she should, only searching one at a time and then closing them with each document in the exact location it was before.
But then the handle jiggled, and she ran as quickly and stealthily as she could up the chimney, which she had already swept for arrays beforehand.
She stayed as close as she could to it without actually tripping it, there was no chance of any holes going from outside of the castle in would be left undefended.
“Something is wrong with him, he spoke too oddly about everything, he was too eager to reveal his real opinion on Yggdra.”
“I don’t believe so. My wife deeply knows Harlan, and he has always been strange.
I don’t think he understands people. What his real opinion of Yggdra is, I don’t know, but he put on the facade of confliction to outwardly show us that he is conflicted about her.”
“If we can get him to do something and we can tie it to him, I think our best bet is to blackmail him.
I’ve read the file on him, he is prone to feel intense guilt, and we can use that, get him to do one thing then another, escalate until he feels there is no escape. We’ll have him by the balls.”
“Or he could tear both of our heads off.”
Jas could sit there for hours, but she really rather they shut up and left so she could finish her job.
Their conversation turned more mundane, they talked about specific numbers for sending crops, they mentioned routes that could be used to get them past the blockades, dates, times.
The longer they talked the more names they mentioned, it sounded like Greenfield wasn’t just part of a conspiracy, but was the head, which made a lot of sense when one thought about it.
A duke had the resources and the land to manufacture and move so many things here and there that finding the discrepancies would be nearly impossible without a full scale audit, and that would still require them to look at the books, which might be faked.
When things went through counties, they were always inspected, unless of course they belonged to someone higher up the chain.
When a carriage or cart had the crest of a duchy, they passed through with only a minimal check, just to confirm the crest really.
If the driver had the right papers, they could move anything anywhere within the duchy, letting the last parts be moved by mercenaries and smugglers, or, if they had people across the borders, they could keep the chain going even longer.
Greenfield got a call on his amulet.
“Sir Greenfield.”
“Ah, I’ve been waiting. What do you know?”
“Last week, Sir Fomoria entered the lab under the castle, and when he came out it was very late at night, but he hasn’t been down since, and he was once turned away when he tried to enter, but I couldn’t hear why he was turned away.”
“And the queen, does she know?”
“I’ve looked around as best as I can, and nobody has heard anything about you. Your nephew seemed to be here for exactly what he claimed to be here for.”
“You are absolutely certain?”
“I have people in The Unseen, they are in the throne room almost every day. He has been arguing with her more often lately, trying to convince her to lift the blockades at least partly, to enter into a trade deal with our faction so as to maintain some basic quality of life for the citizens.”
“Thank you.”
He ended the call and put the amulet back in his inner pocket.
“That was fast, are you sure you can trust your network of maids?”
“I’ve never had any issue with her, she’s been the head maid for three decades.”
Jas was genuinely baffled.
She hadn’t found a single thing, he didn’t even burn his letters, he actually used a specially made box that used void to destroy them and swirl the dust up to make it even harder to reconstruct the papers.
Yet when he started talking with this other man, suddenly he did everything but make a written confession before he left the room.
It was too easy.
Sure she didn’t have physical proof, but her words to Harlan, backed by a soulspeak communication of memories would be enough to put together a very serious investigation, to potentially even put the duke’s household under immediate arrest, branch families included.
She waited until they had been gone for a minute, and then she resumed her search.
It seemed silly, but she felt the seats where the two men should’ve been.
They were cold.
When she was done, she used a special tool Balor invented, which seemed to be a thin rod with a gem on one end.
It snaked its way under the doorway, shifting into a near liquid state, and the end on the outside vibrated, sending out nearly imperceptible distortions through the air which would at least tell her if anyone was within 20 feet, which was a bit less than the hallway she was in.
She didn’t see anything, so she pulled the rod back inside and then used her key to exit the room.
Jas jumped back onto the ceiling, slipping into the shadows, and went back to the room, where Cynthia and Adina waited.
“Something was wrong in there.”
“What?”
“Duke… your husband, I heard him do everything but say that he wanted to cut the queen from ear to ear.
But I didn’t see him directly enter the room, I just heard him and another man.”
She wasn’t going to tell her about the oddities, not just yet.
“Show me.”
Cynthia laid out her hand, palm facing up, and Jas showed her the memories.
Cynthia’s face became scrunched.
“Who the hell is that other man?”
“You don’t recognize the voice?”
“I’ve never heard it before in my life. I know my husband’s business associates, I know his close friends, and I know the friends he doesn’t think I know about, but I do not know that man.
Shit. Just, climb back in the case. I’ll go out and tell Harlan that Adina still isn’t feeling well, and that he should take her home to rest. We’ll just say she hasn’t recovered from giving birth due to Viviane’s special nature, nobody will think twice about it.”
Adina was breast feeding her, again, the infant had a voracious appetite, and she didn’t like what she heard.
“I don’t like you using my daughter as an excuse like that.”
“And I don’t like that my husband may be decapitated for high treason, but we do what we must.”
“I’m sorry.”
“This is why I stayed out of politics, I never wanted to be put in a situation like this, to pick between the husband of my child and my sister who I love, to pick which of my siblings I love and hate based on the policies that have been put in their heads by people who are sponsoring them as king or queen.”
Few people had seen Cynthia angry, she could be impassioned, but the raw fury in her voice was undeniable, and sent shivers down the spines of those in the room, bringing Viviane to tears.
“I need a minute to compose myself.”
----------------------------------------
A giant feathered vampire bat descended onto a camp, tearing away at the throats of men with his beaked maw.
A smaller bird, a crow, flew overhead, and waited.
When the proper mages appeared to deal with the beast, they came out in a group, and the crow descended upon them.
It was just above the heads of the men when it turned into a burst of feathers, and a man came from those feathers.
Upside down, David spun in the air, either decapitating or nearly doing so to the men.
An elite soldier, a baron or count, one of them with their false golem armors, his blood gem that was fashioned into gorget, rushed at him, his greatsword was as large as a man, only by virtue of the armor and another large gem that ran down most of the length of the blade could he lift and wield such a thing.
Yet David worried little, right up until the man turned the sword to the side and he saw the light of the gems activate.
Horizontal to the ground, he swung it down like a fan, and a great burst of wind which would’ve torn lesser men apart launched from the greatsword.
But David was a fast thinker, and he questioned every oddity of weapons and armors that he saw through the attack as it happened, countering with a quick spell to soften the ground, where he leapt into the mud.
The wind blew away this small pond of liquid earth, but by being inside, it absorbed enough of the blow to keep his limbs from flying off.
“I’m impressed, not many would be able to escape at such a range.”
“Your usage was lackluster, come on, just wind? If you had imbued it with something else, frost probably would be best, you could sap the area of heat as well.”
“I will tell my forgemaster to make adjustments then.”
“That thing isn’t worthwhile as scrap in the hands of someone who can’t use it, no matter how many spells and enchantments you put on it, no matter how many lives you sacrifice to skip gaining real power.”
David calmly walked towards the man, and both of them took the same stance.
They stood with their right foot forward, the left was held slightly up, ready for a pounce.
They held both hands on their handles with their backs straight.
Some would call this stance the suicide stance, the idea being that the blades would slide against one another, and if one side didn’t move out of the way, they would both die.
But, if, for instance, one side had a normal sword, and the other had one five foot in length, and an even two feet wide, a veritable slab of metal, the difference in reach would make it impossible for the side with the shorter sword to win.
They raised their blade up, and the man with the greatsword was confused, but he looked for how David was planning to get out alive.
The only way to dodge would be to jump back, or to the right, at which point either he would blow him away, or he would simply tilt the blade, and cut David in two at an angle.
They stood there for quite some time, considering there was a battle around them at least, in reality, he only waited seven seconds.
David swung first, steel scraped steel, sparks flew, and then David turned into a flock of crows.
He believed that David would reform behind him, but he hadn’t considered that David would just fly straight up.
The man looked up, not having paid any attention to what was happening elsewhere in the camp.
Around the beaked vampire bat, a ring of condensed blood had formed from those he had slain, and as David swung, it expanded outward, cutting deep and wide.
The giant of a man was cut in twain, his armor didn’t stop the blood.
He laid, gasping, trying to scream out, but his lungs could hold no air.
So he just opened and closed his mouth, like a fish on dry land.
David came back down and stabbed the man through the eye.
Harlan taught him to be brutal, but also to kill as quickly as he could, suffering was evil, death was freedom from this.
At least, such was the way David had interpreted Harlan.
He touched the blade, and it too turned to crows, which flew into his body, and he felt the armory of the soul grow.