When they got back to the palace, though it was past time for her to sleep, Harlan still demanded a visit with Rosewell, and he brought Jas along.
Who the small woman was became a matter of concern, but the fact that Harlan pushed so hard to have an immediate audience made them ask Rosewell, and in turn, she agreed to allow him in.
“What couldn’t wait until tomorrow.”
“I believe that someone is setting up Duke Greenfield to appear as a traitor. This woman is an agent of mine, and she overheard a conversation between what seemed to be the duke and an unknown man, but she found not a shred of physical evidence that links him to anything.”
“You broke into the home of a duke, for an unauthorized investigation?”
“No, he invited me inside, I was at his party tonight. And Cynthia gave my agent a key to his office so she could either clear her husband or condemn him. Trespassing perhaps, but there was no break in.”
Technically he was right, he didn’t break in.
But Jas lockpicked drawers, which was breaking in under the law.
“You planned this then? For how long?”
“Just over a week ago, Grenth Greenfield came here to bring news of his father possibly being a traitor, and at the same time, he said that from what was said by his father, that Duke Greenfield might be one as well, but he wasn’t certain about his other uncle, Ash. I’ve had people looking into the duke since then.”
Rosewell tapped on her thick comforters.
“And why did you need me to hear this tonight, and not tomorrow morning?”
“Jay, show her the memories of the meeting.”
Rosewell shivered like she was suddenly tossed into the harsh northern winter.
She removed her covers and started to get dressed for day clothes again, not caring that Harlan was still standing there.
“What has you so scared?”
“Nothing.”
“So you intend to outright lie to me?”
“Queen’s Blade or not, there are secrets which belong to me.”
Knowing that Rosewell didn’t trust him with whoever the second man in the memories got under his skin.
He had known her for 7 years, for much of his conscious life, and he had been given a high rank, her personal attack dog, but now she wouldn’t trust him with who he was supposed to protect her from.
“What about the duke?”
“I will handle that in a timely manner, you should go rest, the planes will be finished tomorrow.
Did you ever finish those bombs of yours?”
“I did.”
“Then go back to your wife, but I will offer this one piece of wisdom.
Keep watch on every soul, and every face, if the soul is the same and the face is not, kill them without hesitation before they are allowed to defend themselves.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“This is an order, if you notice a soul that you are certain does not match the face you last saw them with, kill them and worry about the consequences later. You are dismissed.”
Halfway between her room and his, he found Balor leaving, his destination unknown.
“Oh, what are you doing up?”
“I’m not allowed to say.”
“Rosewell called you?”
“No, I don’t know yet why, but I made a promise already to keep quiet.”
Balor started walking away.
“Can’t you just-”
“My word is my bond.”
Balor waved him away, not even turning around.
What she wanted with him, that she wasn’t willing to speak about with Harlan, bothered him.
It was the not knowing, the distrust, that he didn’t understand, and lack of understanding was often the source of fear for any creature.
He made his way back to his room, where his Ava had stopped by.
“Oh, to what do I owe the pleasure.”
“Lugh wanted to see Viviane again.”
“She has a strong grip.”
He had fashioned himself into a rattle for her, hover let the infant swing him around.
“Well, I’m glad you are having fun. Ava, can we speak?”
“Sure.”
She thought he’d put up a veil, or take her aside, but instead he got down on one knee and bowed to her.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For a lot, a lot of killing, a lot of suffering, a lot of a lot. I’m sorry. I know you forgave me because of Redmond, but I want to make you a promise like I made to Adina and Viviane.
I will be a better man, I don’t want to make excuses for what I’ve done, I’ve been evil, and those mistakes aren’t gone. If I cannot change the past, I hope to write a better future.”
Ava didn’t really know how to respond at first.
“When you’ve shown it with actions instead of words, I’ll believe you.”
“Tomorrow, come with me to the weapons test, you’ll see that I’m trying.”
“Fine. Lugh, come on, we’ve got rest to make up.”
“Have you two been up late?”
“Early actually, we’ve been taking morning drills with the royal guard. They said there wasn’t much point to us training with the regular guard since we’re enhanced.”
“Well that was nice of them. Lugh, do you still run around as a boy sometimes?”
“No, not really, but Ava and I-”
“SHHHHHH, not yet.‘
“Oh, Ava and I do nothing.”
Harlan just laughed, he did miss Lugh’s rather blunt nature, his near inability to lie.
In the afternoon, the group of Harlan, Dagda, Lilly, Ava, and Lugh, moved through a gate and out to a wide open plain where a hanger had been built.
Lilly’s flew first, Dagda gave her that, though really he was having some last minute issues with his plane.
As expected, it was fine, without any issue.
It went up, it went down, it could glide, and was even very agile.
One change she added wasn’t to the plane itself, but rather to those inside of it.
The pilots and the crew all wore metal bottomed boots that were tightly strapped and magnetized so no matter what direction the floor was, they wouldn’t be sent flying all over the plane.
“Now this is the fun part.”
She gave the order over her amulet, and the back of the plane opened up, and the bombs came out.
The bombs were 10 to a rack, and the racks themselves were not connected physically, rather by a magnet spell which would then deactivate due to an array in the back of the plane.
When they dropped out, sliding from the racks, they disconnected from one another, and more spells activated to keep them flying straight with a grouping tight.
They were bombs, a blast area was always going to be there, but Harlan was the only one of them which was really worried about making sure they hit only the target and not everything else around the target as well.
They hit the ground, sending up clouds of dirt, and thunderous noise.
Then again, and again.
There were three rails on the bomber, but the ones on the left and right held just three racks, while the center had a little more room, and held a fourth rack, bringing it to 100 bombs per full load, though more often than not, one rack of each side would be reserved for extra gunner ammo and they wouldn’t fly with full loads.
The turrets unloaded onto flying targets, balloons, not exactly a great test, but they couldn’t well bring a wyvern to be killed.
Lilly was giddy to see everything go off without a hitch, and then Harlan opened a gate in the sky to let the generals and other spectators see the craters.
“Fantastic.”
“It is a good design, I’m proud of you.”
It wasn’t a complex feeling he felt from her, she was someone who needed praise, which she so often failed to get from her father.
Even when he did, it never felt right, she knew from a young age that he saw her as a tool, a piece on his gameboard, not as his flesh and blood.
Next was Dagda’s design. Outwardly it was very much the same, but his had wings which could tilt, letting it take off from a near standstill, though it still needed a landing strip.
His bombs were different, each fit six to a rack, and they were kept in place by magnets, not the rails of Lilly’s design, letting the men push the bombs out the back in any order they wished, which was an important part of the difference in the bombs.
They were more magical than Lilly’s bombs, and when pushed out the back, the rack would split, and then the bomb itself would split.
When they struck the ground great balls of liquid fire splashed up, followed by blasts of wind, then pillars of dirt and ice.
Yet nobody saw what the dark bombs did, they hit the ground and made an odd sound.
There was some confusion, questions of if they had malfunctioned.
“No no no, my design is perfect, they worked exactly as intended, Harlan, show them.”
“I’m not opening the gate until the plane is on the ground.”
“Fine.”
He clicked together his metal tentacles, unnerving those around him.
For the turrets, they took time to charge a blast of darkness, a rather simple spiral nova, as they passed a mountaintop, cutting deeply and setting off an avalanche.
Then they shot fire at nothing specific, but it was a liquid fire, it spread all the way to the ground, setting the grasslands ablaze over a great area.
It landed much closer to them, the wings twisting let it land with less than half the space of Lilly’s plane, and a set of metal legs let it walk and do an effective zero point turn on the ground.
“Now, show them the dark bomb craters.”
The men still didn’t quite get what was special about them, they just saw more dark craters.
“Cover your eyes until I say otherwise.”
Dagda launched a flare spell through the gate.
“Open now.”
With a source of light inside, they could not see how these dark bombs had cut out large vertical shafts in the earth.
“We could destroy the mountain forts with these.”
Many of the spectators agreed with Dagda’s plan.
The people all looked at Harlan, who was gating hundreds of soldiers who wore the crest of Fomoria out onto the plain in groups; they were nervously carrying bombs with them as they went through.
“Sir Fomoria, what is the meaning of this?”
“I want a better war.”
“And that means?”
Harlan didn’t reply, he continued to direct his men through the gate one after another
They were really hoping they hadn’t just walked to their deaths as target dummies, but working under House Fomoria was one of the better jobs any soldier could have, so they kept faith.
He gave the order to activate the bombs in sync by hitting the head with sledgehammers, simulating them being dropped from the sky.
From the hanger where they were watching, they just saw clouds of purple gas rise from the plains.
In ten minutes, the clouds had dissipated enough that Harlan said they could go through, and he opened a gate.
“Come on, this will be far more effective in person.”
Only a dozen men had the courage to step through.
Men in the general senses, as a shortened form of human, Ava and Lilly went through as well, and Dagda was technically a man in the sense of sexes, but he had never been a man.
They checked the bodies.
“They’re still alive. What was in that bomb?”
“Sleeping gas. Alchemical bombs are something I won’t claim mastery over, but I had a great teacher who was willing to help with this project.”
“What about the cost?”
“Cheaper than the explosive ones. The base is actually no different than what we use for putting mimic trees to sleep, and since we now produce that en masse for soul smiths, it has become very affordable.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
“What if they hit men on the way down.”
“Well, these each weigh a healthy sum, and they’ll be dropped from thousands of feet high, so of course they’ll die, but this will still spare more than it will kill.”
A general spoke up.
“If we can blow them apart, why would we waste time and resources taking so many prisoners?”
“Sir… actually, I don’t care about your name. That call is not yours to make, I will take this proposal to our queen, and she will make her choice.”
Dagda moved up.
“Which plane did you like more?”
“Both have their benefits. But your magical bombs, the dark and earth at least, seem very useful to instantly set up defenses over a wide area which could cover retreats or force the enemy into a corner. The ice could cool areas down quickly, and under the right weather, they would turn dry land into a bog. Very good work on them.”
“YES, YES, YOU UNDERSTAND. THESE TROGLODYTES JUST THINK OF FIRE AND DEATH.”
The main reason was that they went with Lilly’s plane was that Dagda’s, despite his having some features that made it more effective in some sense, was that his plane was well over six times the cost of Lilly’s, and even at just a dozen of them being made, they saw little reason to have more than one of them.
Harlan was about to start running more tests by putting mock forts up, but he was called away.
He moved through the halls quickly and with purpose, all the way to the infirmary.
Sepul stood over Safira, the flesh from her face was gone, along with her eyes, but the armor prevented serious damage to the rest of her body.
“What happened?”
“A bomb. It had something in it.”
“Alchemical? Fragmentation? Details.”
“Alchemical most likely, I can’t heal her face. It is a crystal, anti-magic, not naturally occurring.”
“How do you know?”
“I know every natural crystal which has this effect, those would not work as such a fine dust.”
“Have you tried peeling more of her face off?”
“Some of the shards are very deep, they moved in as larger pieces, then turned to dust in a secondary explosion.”
One of the other doctors pushed past them, directly opening a vein and using a blood crystal to give more.
The wounds on her face were constantly weeping, they wouldn’t close, but they couldn’t be healed.
“They need to be removed, but any magic fine enough to get rid of them is disrupted by them.”
“They can’t be washed out then?”
“Anything strong enough to do that might kill her.”
“Lasers?”
“With being light based, I’m worried that I’d burn through her with any refraction, and once the crystals burn up into the air, I don’t know what they will do.”
“What if I used void?”
“Would you have the control required to maintain cohesion? Do you have any experience with anti-magic?”
“Not really… but I know someone who might.”
It was a long shot to call the other Harlan, but he came, and he seemed in a good enough mood.
“Do you think that-”
“Silence. Clear the room, I will call you when it is done.”
“Harlan, who is this?”
“This is-”
“Just an ally of The Darkness, nobody you need to concern yourself with.”
The tall blue man was given the room after some argument from Sepul and Harlan which amounted to Sepul backing what Harlan thought would work, and Harlan saying he’d fistfight anyone who tried to enter the room.
Within five minutes, he exited.
“She is free of the crystals, and I grew her face back.”
“You should stay until she wakes up, I’m sure she’d thank you.”
He walked away without a word, and opened a void gate, or tried, Sepul prevented it from forming.
“Please, stay for a moment, the woman would be grateful, and you should be given an appropriate reward.
She is a very important person.”
“And? What do you want from me?”
“Your skin, those horns, you are from outside the veil, I am interested in what it is like out there.
I’ve only been for short periods of time.”
“I do hate to disappoint, but I’m not native, it’s been less than a year since I left the veil.”
Sepul looked at him closely.
His face had taken on the features of the Dague, but not much, his grandson was still in there.
“Harlan?”
“Call me King Fomoria.”
“But, how, I can see both of you, you are not the same people, and you are both champions.
Which of you is still champion to her?”
“This one can explain what I am. Now, I must return to my people.”
“Your people?”
“I must go, I’ve death to sow, blood to reap.
And you, I will leave you with this.”
The others had to look away, but King Fomoria gave Harlan the beam sigil.
“This is how I saved her life, find your meaning in it. You’ve changed more than I, I have seen that we cannot ever be one another again, the light in you cannot warm my soul, it is just blinding.”
King Fomoria tried to open the void gate again, and once more it fizzled out.
“Safira is still weak, could you stop me and protect her at once.”
Sepul felt like he should be able to do it, that Harlan couldn’t possibly attain great strength in less than a year.
But the look in his eyes, the absolute confidence in that man, it gave him just the slightest pause.
“Please be safe.”
The space relaxed, and he opened his void gate, but stopped just a step from it.
“No. Safety cannot exist in a world with my enemies still breathing.”
With King Fomoria gone, Harlan was now in the hallway surrounded by royal guards, doctors, and a champion, who all wanted answers.
So he stepped inside the infirmary, and told them nothing.
The royal guards who were there when Harlan explained the story hadn’t told a soul, they were close knit as far as military groups went, but unless they were told they could tell something, they would err on the side of caution with information.
“This isn’t a conversation to have in the middle of an infirmary.”
“True. Dinner at my home, tomorrow, bring your family. Safira, how are you?”
Safira was somewhat out of it still.
“Your face, how does it feel?”
“Huh? Oh… yes, I feel fine.”
She tried to take a step down from the table, and fell instantly, which Harlan expected, so he was ready to catch her.
Her breath quickened and her face became red as she looked at him.
He turned her on her side and made a bucket of void for her to vomit into.
Harlan patted her back and held up her hair with telekinesis.
“Just let it out, you’ll feel better when it is all gone.”
“Don’t treat me like a-”
She resumed emptying her stomach.
When she was done, she was more out of it than when she started.
“Get away you milksop, bring back the other doctor, the handsome one. He had rugged hands, a strong grip, long fingers.”
Before she could say anything more and embarrass herself in front of her fellow royal guardsmen, Harlan put up a veil.
----------------------------------------
Several weeks before the attack on the academy, Ava was on a solo mission to take out some bandits, Breken wanted her to have more experience acting like he did, if she was to be his replacement that is.
It was a hard fought battle, one that both of them hid from the others, but she was dead set on being the head of security for Redwall.
For that to happen, she needed to have a reputation with the people, because Redwall listened to them to keep them happy so long as it didn’t cost him too much.
Then she needed to get the other soldiers to trust and respect her, not just in power, but in her ability to make the right choices to save lives and do right by them.
If she was a living god, but she still screwed up and everyone around her died on her missions, nobody would want her to lead anyone.
Finally, and this was the most important part, she had to get Baron Redwall to appoint her, as no matter what else happened, he was the ultimate end to her journey.
Assuming that he outlived Breken or didn’t step down, that is, either of those would make Jaramis the one who made that choice.
She moved through the woods, it was a simple mission, capture a group of bandits.
Just as the end of The Forever War had made more bandits because the army didn’t need so many soldiers, the escalation of the civil war led to another surge because soldiers had to fight, and this drew them away from the lands which they normally served.
But because the world was unfair, simple missions aren’t always simple.
She had done this kind of thing dozens of times with Breken, and less so on her own.
One thing that Breken always made sure she knew was that you should never fight with others around if it can be avoided, and if it can’t, dedicate part of your team to defense.
This was naturally not an option when one was alone, well, technically alone, she had Lugh.
“Of course they have captives. How do we get them out?”
“If I was Harlan...”
“I hate it when plans start like that.”
“But they work.”
“Yeah, and they mean we need to kill a lot of people.”
“If we can’t save the people and capture the bandits, then we save the people. No matter the cost to those who we were sent to capture.”
“I know, but I don’t like it. What do we do?”
“The snake trick?”
“But then you’ll be over there then.”
“You’re strong like Harlan, just… do what we need to do, save them.”
Ava was not drawn to brutality such as her only brother.
Violence was blood on her blade, bodies falling before her, but she would not tear a man apart, she did not burn holes through them.
She gradually grew to dislike magic, the displays of power which stemmed from it, men turned to crystal, cut into strips before they even realized what had happened, bleeding from their ears after a loud blast of sound, blinded by beams of light in the eyes.
But that didn’t mean she had any intent to stop using magic.
She threw Lugh through the man closest to the captured women, and he took a form not unlike a snake, slithering through the grass and cutting the tendons on the bandits, making them either easy targets to kill, or easy targets to capture.
Her part in this job was to jump down, kill the other closet one, decapitation by knife hand chop in this case, put up a dome of earth around the captives, and then keep the other bandits away.
The camp was supposed to be 20 bandits at most, yet if she had to guess, the scouts had seen a forward camp, assumed it a regular camp, and reported as such.
There were a hundred bandits in this place however, by rough headcount, and assuming some in the tents out of sight.
Ava jumped from one side of the dome to the other.
An airborne opponent was normally an easy target, but not when they wore an armor that granted flight, and by that, also air control.
She twisted and roundhouse kicked the man in the head without him being able to defend, his mundane blade shattered under boot, and his skull then followed.
Brain matter painted the forest floor, and she looked away.
It just reminded her of Harlan, of that camp clearing.
But, that was exactly what she needed, to invoke fear and panic.
The next one that came at her, she hit with an open palm strike, and with a little bit of cutting wind at the same time, his heart went flying from his body, water magic made the display far more bloody than it would otherwise be.
It hit the ground with a wet thud.
“Can people do that? That doesn't seem physically possible.”
She stomped down, sending tremors through the earth.
“COME HERE AND FIND OUT.”
The men almost wanted to laugh, Ava lacked the bulk of a man, and her voice showed how young she was.
But when three more bandits rushed her, but when her boots became sharp and she stood on one leg, kicking with great accuracy and power, putting holes through the men, suddenly her age and sex meant little.
She easily held off the bandits that were there, Lugh returned to her hand, and they were about to set the captives free when the bandit leader arrived.
She was a woman in her 30s from the looks of it.
She had bulging muscles, with a small bosom and buttock.
Ava nearly mistook her for a man.
“Clear out, or I’ll kill you.”
The woman spoke in a deep tone that Ava couldn’t tell if it was natural or an act.
“I can’t do that.”
“Alright.”
She rushed forward with a hammer in each hand, but the instant the hammers contacted Lugh, the woman was gone from their sight.
Ava had only an instant to understand what was happening when the hammers struck her on both sides of the head from behind.
Were it not for the golem armor, her head would’ve been crushed like a watermelon, or perhaps a tomato.
Her thoughts were scrambled by the attack, but Lugh saw the second one coming and told the golem armor where to move.
Ava stabbed back, thrusting as if she was a child pretending to be stabbed by holding a stick under her arm, and the woman had to dodge.
She stared.
“That was a neat trick. Was that your armor or your living sword that did that one?”
“I hope my reputation precedes me.”
“Oh yes, sister to Archmage Changeling. I wonder what I could get if I had you captive. Do you think I could get a nice little suit like yours? Maybe a dress would fit me better?”
“You are only getting out of this dead or in chains. And may the gods, Reinoan or otherwise, have mercy on your soul if you tried to ransom me.”
“Yes, your brother’s reputation precedes him. But what if he never knows who killed you?”
The woman seemed to teleport again, but after the third strike, Ava knew exactly what was happening.
Skip, as had been shown by Ebon, was a spell that moved one forward in time, but the spell could be just as dangerous to the user as the target.
Ava thought she was faster and stronger than the woman, she was enhanced after all, her body was that of wyvern flesh, she could lift, with a great deal of effort, well over a ton.
She wasn’t Harlan, she didn’t weigh multiple tons, she couldn’t punch her way through a mountain, but she was certainly far above a normal person.
Yet the body enhancement that came from cycling magic over decades, and the woman’s time as a mercenary, made her physically on par, and experience bridged the gap.
In a flurry of blows, Lugh tried to tell Ava and the armor where to go, his sight went around in 360 degrees after all, but the time it took to see where the woman was, tell Ava, and then have Ava move, was too much.
The armor wouldn’t take much more of a beating, her hammers still sent through enough force through to hurt, and under the steel skin, she was bruised.
Then they stopped.
Ava struggled to just remain standing.
“Oh this is fun, I haven’t had a chance to just beat on someone in too long, they always fall apart before I get the chance to…”
The bandit rubbed her loins, her tone showed clearly what she felt, this was why she was a bandit, she was a person who got off on hurting people, but she had spent enough time fighting and training that those she fought against could rarely give her the pleasure she wanted anymore, she needed something stronger to beat on.
“You are completely fucked in the head, you know that, right?”
“Yes, talk to me like that, tell me I’m your filthy little freak.”
The woman rushed again, and Ava kept trying to do what her mother had done with Harlan, forcing herself into a position so that once skip was used, she could slap him in the back of the head.
But had Harlan wanted to, he could’ve turned the tide, and instead of a slap to the back of the head, he could’ve dodged back under the hand.
The difference in skill was enough that Ava couldn’t actually do anything but sometimes defend against the attacks.
One landed strong, sending her crashing into the dome.
The men and women inside panicked, but they recognized her, or rather, the armor.
“Lady Ava, please, save us.”
“I’M GONNA BREAK THROUGH YOU, AND I’M GONNA KILL THOSE ANTS.
I WANT YOU FIGHTING ME WITH EVERYTHING YOU HAVE.”
“Ava, we can’t let her get past us, I’m calling Harlan.”
Yet he wasn’t answering, he left his amulet in his jacket while he was helping Adina to clean Viviane.
They didn’t know it, so they just left the line open, and hoped that they could survive long enough for Harlan to answer or for the other soldiers to come.
Yet she doubted those men would make any difference.
Harlan could kill thousands of men under him, and none of them, no matter the number, would change the outcome, 10,000, 20,000, 60,000, the bites of a million ants would not fell a dragon.
If she survived for just long enough for those men to arrive, it would just be blood on her hands.
Nobody was coming to save her, it was just them, and it might as well be against the world.
If only we were together completely, if she had her sight and he had her body.
Their minds were already aligned with one another, they both had the same sense of justice, morals, right and wrong.
They knew that if they didn’t kill this woman, then they would die, and then the captives would die, and then the soldiers coming for the captives would die.
Everything faded to black, everything but the woman, Lugh and Ava synched their minds beyond normal, their souls started to feed one another, filtering through the armor that was the point between Ava’s flesh and Lugh’s handle.
With the next attack, they blocked it, and Ava’s body moved like it was made from putty, but then when struck, her flesh was like steel, and the bandit’s hands stung like she was striking iron with her bare hands.
She tried to use her skip again, but Ava saw everything around her, she saw the world like Lugh, Balor, all of the other soulsmithed beings.
If she focused, she could see far, but there was always a 360 view for a dozen or so feet.
No matter where the woman tried to attack from, ever angle was covered, and she was ecstatic.
She laughed and moaned in pleasure with every small cut that appeared on her body.
With a final exchange, the woman had pulled a dagger from her waist, something special, and tried to stick it in the gaps in the armor.
Yet a golem armor only looked like it should have gaps, the shifting nature meant that in reality it still required cutting liquid steel that would resist the blade.
But in this case, the blade went right through, and then the woman’s arm went through, and the flesh closed back on it, locking her in place as Lugh stabbed through her jaw and split her head from front to back.
With the only thing in their view defeated, that single minded desire to live and to protect those behind them faded, and the connection was broken.
“What was that, that felt great!”
Lugh and Ava disagreed, and she was vomiting until even her stomach acid was greatly lowered and her throat burned.