5.

‘Misha, Princess?! What happened?!’

Simon raced towards the entrance of their viewing box and took over supporting Misha. He was furious yet also relieved to see them. Misha was just furious. Despite his groggy state, the man had been chewing himself up, promising to castrate himself for his failure as a guard.

Miles glanced over his shoulder. He was eating satai—chicken pierced onto a small wooden stick. No doubt a speciality of the restaurant on their floor. His eyes were glued to the new earring Silvah was wearing. He didn’t comment on it.

Damien stood from his chair and walked over, his eyebrows scrunched together.

‘We looked for you. Are you okay?’

‘Fine. Thank you for asking. A little girl on the third floor was hiding in the toilet,’ Silvah said. ‘We brought her to her guardian.’ Here she sighed deeply without faking it. She truly was tired after all. ‘He forced us to stay in his room and ordered us snacks as a show of thanks.’

She could feel Misha burning holes into her back. He may have been unconscious, but he would have never bought that story. Not if she hadn’t told him to keep his mouth shut before entering that is.

Damien turned to Misha.

‘I fell off a table while dancing,’ the guard said and left it at that.

Miles slowly shoved another piece of chicken into his mouth.

‘You need to hurry if you want to retrieve your knife.’

Silvah startled. She’d forgotten about it completely.

‘Yes. You said you were going to take both of us down to the basement?’

That would turn out well for her if so.

Miles snapped his fingers. Then pointed an empty skewer to a table on the side. There were two sets of clothes there, ones that looked like the uniform the assistant bringing items onto the stage was wearing. They hadn’t been there before.

‘We’re going to play part of the assistance workforce,’ Damien said.

Saying he didn’t sound too happy about it was doing his display a disservice. He looked like a man standing in front of their God, ready for any punishment sentenced upon him.

‘It won’t be as bad as you make it out to be,’ Miles said, poking Damien in the side.

Silvah hadn’t seen him move. What Shisui had said about them came back to her. ‘You’re a sorcerer, Silvah. And so are those two men.’ Was Miles using an ability? She couldn’t tell.

‘Whatever,’ Damien said.

He turned to Silvah and explained to her the setup of the auction. It took place in multiple phases with intermittent breaks. Every phase had a topic. The current one was arts and artefacts, which included paintings and sculptures. Second would be a segment called exotics. Third was arms and weaponry. There were other segments as well, such as jewellery and gemstones, antique books and scrolls, and spirit instruments.

‘Spirit instruments?’ Silvah said. ‘Housing foulbeasts and cellites?’

‘Yes. Some of them.’ Damien raised a high eyebrow. ‘You know of them?’

‘Heard of them through my father,’ she quickly corrected. ‘I thought they were fantasy stories, though.’

‘I see.’

Damn. Not like me to slip up. Her mind was just fried because of the number of new things to take into account. Whether Damien bought it or not she didn’t know but he continued with his explanation. Their plan was simple. The podium was connected to a side room on the left as seen from their viewing box. That’s where the assistants stored the items up for auction in the current phase. At the back of that room would be an elevator which went down a single floor. To the basement. There the assistants would be preparing the next batch of products for transport upstairs. Their entry would occur during the break, where they would swap places with two unsuspecting assistants. The nature of this ‘swap’ wasn’t expanded upon. But Silvah could guess.

‘I’m going with you,’ Misha said.

He had intently been listening to their conversation without saying anything.

‘You’re not,’ she and Simon said in tandem.

‘You’re still not fully recovered,’ Silvah said, giving the other guard a grateful nod.

‘I’ll go instead,’ Simon said.

Silvah shook her head.

‘There are only two uniforms available and if we go with too many, the jig will be up. I need you to fight for the items on the list Uncle gave to me while I’m gone.’

Simon argued with her, but Silvah stayed adamant. And what else could the guard say against that? She was his boss for the time being. Hers was the last word.

Below, Kanai announced a short break for the audience members to use the restroom and order refreshments. It was time.

Damien and Silvah quickly changed—Simon shielded her from view. Then the Meteora college student moved in front of Miles with the heavy movement of a grandfather. He motioned for her to follow suit.

As she closed the distance, Miles whispered something in Damien’s ear that seemed to shock the boy before his features relaxed a moment later.

Silvah came to stand beside them.

‘Ready?’ Miles said.

She prepared herself, not sure what to expect—

He placed a hand on both their shoulders. Then the world blurred.

6.

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

The room vibrated with the vanishing of Damien and Silvah. Behind him, Miles heard the mute staring of confused men.

Miles counted down.

One.

Two.

Three.

‘What did you do to the mistress?!’ The taller one yelled.

Both men had pulled their pistols. Miles was already behind them. He touched their temples and they fell unconscious. He teleported them onto the couches.

‘Now then.’

He looked up at the viewing box on the fourth floor. The rooms were protected with energy barriers, keeping you from sensing what went on inside. Not so for the hallway, though. He knew which one Silvah had entered.

‘Let’s pay them a visit.’

7.

Miles had teleported Damien to the holding room on the immediate left of the podium. Silvah wasn’t there.

Why. Why would he do that? No. Why was the wrong question to ask. Nothing Miles ever did made sense to anyone but himself. Also, what had that last statement been about? ‘Don’t count on me after I warp you. You’re on your own until the end,’ he said. Was this supposed to be some kind of test? One where he had to defend the girl as she looked for her weapon? That would proof troublesome. He could beat the guards in a one on one, sure. But if all of them stormed him, especially the second grade sorcerer, he wasn’t taking them out without killing them.

Questions rapid fired through Damien’s brain though he knew they were useless. At least he placed me behind cover. The mirror he found himself behind was tall and wide enough to shield him fully. On the backside were written in red letters: keep sealed until ready for binding. Do not remove under any circumstances. Interesting. Was there a spirit inside?

Damien peeked at the assistants in the room, watched them haul items to the edge of the storage room, placing them in such a way that they could be rolled onto the stage within a second of Count Celesta announcing the next item. One of the assistants went to the back of the room, next to the shaftless elevator—a flat surface surrounded by an iron fence at the top with only two buttons: one with an up arrow and one with a down arrow. The fence was connected to the floor instead of the elevator itself. So the ride down would be without protection. It wouldn’t be needed with the short travel distance, though.

She came to a stop next to a cart that was large enough to hold a human corpse. A blanket covered the item on top of it, so Damien had to spread his senses. Carefully. Any one of these people could be a sorcerer capable of perceiving his inspection. They didn’t seem to notice, though, and he was free to poke around. He recognised the faint emanation of foul energy wafting of the hidden item immediately. The egg. The Primordial egg. He’d be willing to bet on his mother’s maiden name.

It was why, when he saw the assistant peek around the room quickly, then back at the egg, Damien honed all his attention in on them. The assistant was an Ishwari girl of average features which didn’t warrant a second look. Yet the foul energy gathering in her arm revealed she was about to do something.

Damien considered getting out of his hiding place and confronting her. But he couldn’t. There were too many pairs of eyes here who could spot him appearing from behind his cover, which would lead to suspicion. He needed a clever way in.

‘What are you doing over there?!’

Damien stilled. Fuck. Had he been discovered?

‘Yes. You! Don’t think I don’t see you!’

Sighing, Damien stepped from behind the mirror. How was he going to talk his way out of this? He opened his mouth.

‘You got me—’

Only to shut it when he noticed no one was looking at him. Not even the worker a few feet away from him who must’ve heard him speak up. They were looking at the back of the room, where a person who looked like a manager or at least head assistant—their assistant uniform was green—was chewing the girl at the cart out.

‘Home many times do I have to tell you! No looking at our goods. They are too precious to even risk the smudge of your malformed fingers!’

‘Sorry, Ma’am.’

The girl shrunk in on herself.

‘I don’t give a shit about your apologies. What’s your name? You better hope you’re not from some no name place.’

‘Kozuka Magobei.’

‘Kozuka? We have a Kozuka family that sends us maids?’

The head assistant went through her ledger, presumably searching for a name, which was when the breath in Damien’s lungs froze over.

He looked over all the workers one by one. All of them were girls…

You’ve got to be kidding me. Miles.

The head assistant grabbed Kozuka by the arm.

‘State your patron. You’re not going anywhere until you do.’

Kozuka tried to rip herself free, sending glances at the cart behind her. Right then, Damien sensed eyes on him from his right. The assistant who had heard him speak. He saw something in her gaze. An instantaneous decision.

She screamed. Hard.

Everyone turned towards them. Even Count Celesta who could clearly be heard announcing break time over the stereos in the great hall, broke off in the middle of speaking.

The girl pointed at him and yelled, ‘Intruder!’

Kozuka may have been a strange phenomenon for the head assistant. But there was no mistaking Damien’s gender even from far. The manager let Kozuka’s hand go and stormed towards him.

Outside, Damien could hear a rush of footsteps. No doubt the guards.

But he didn’t pay them any attention. Instead, his eyes were on the girl next to the Primordial egg. Her arm snaked underneath the cover. There was a bright red flash, and at once, like the instinct of a predator flaring, Damien knew what she was doing.

‘She’s stealing the egg!’ he yelled.

The manager whipped around in time to catch Kozuka’s heel with her mouth and she flew back. Kozuka vaulted over the fence, landing on the elevator floor. She smashed the down button.

Damien had no more time to look. The girl who ratted him out charged him and he stepped back, creating distance, only to frown when the girl reached not for him, but the mirror he had been hiding behind. She ripped the cover off, placed her hand on the artefact and muttered,

‘Expel.’

What followed was a wailing cry so high and unnerving that it rippled through the floor and up his limbs. As if ripped from the mirror, the figure of a woman wearing a tattered, white gown fell out. A tense moment passed. After which the spirit peeled her head off the floor. Blood dripped down the underside of her chin, and the purple aura surrounding her solidified her status—this was a malicious spirit. A foulbeast.

‘What’s going on here?!’

One of the guards entering from the stage-side rushed forward. Since the mirror was the next item to be sold, he was standing directly above the foulbeast. He reached for the weapon at his hip—a baton which had been enchanted with cele energy. It was the right weapon for the job. Hitting a defenceless foulbeasts with one of those would be like goring a stake through the heart of a bloodsucker. So. He should’ve won. The problem was simply twofold. One, this was a late third grade foulbeast—far from defenceless. Two, the guard may have an enchanted weapon, but he was no sorcerer, so he lacked the speed to react to what happened next.

The black spike shooting out of the foulbeasts’s back gored him through the stomach. The guard looked down. He placed a free hand on the lance piercing his intestines as if to inspect the reality of it.

‘Wha—’

The second spike went through his heart. Then the beast lunged for the guard’s windpipe and crushed it, so his gag came out as a squeal that died out like a match in the wind.

Four guards arrived after him. Too late. They watched the proceedings with fear in their eyes.

When Damien looked behind him, he saw the girl who had outed him touching more artefacts and whispering that same word. Three more foulbeasts of the same level had been expelled in the small gap of time it took to kill one man.

They roared and screeched in unison.

Damien scowled. He would need to fight through all of them to reach the elevator in time. This is bad. He hoped it didn’t get worse. Which was of course the precise moment that the side wall of the storage room exploded. Assistants, artefacts, and weapons brought here in advance of the oncoming segment of the auction were thrown to the floor. Including Damien who crashed onto his back.

Smoke and dust clouded the senses. But from within the smog, Damien could make out a silhouette. A man with the head of a dragon tattooed around his eye stepped out of the smoke. He wasn’t alone. Emerging over the newcomer’s head was a wingless, serpentine creature. It glided through the chaos with a translucent grace as if it was not wholly tethered to the physical realm, and two long whiskers trailed off from its snout, the ends vanishing and becoming part of the smoke.

The man cast a look past Damien, where the guards had been blasted on their butts from the explosion.

‘Kill them,’ he said.

Two of them looked confused as to why he was giving them commands. The remainder shoved a knife into the throats of their counterparts. As the two others slowly gurgled to death, the killers pulled down their uniforms, revealing the dragon inked onto their skin.

Alright, Damien said to himself.

Things had gotten a lot worse.