Ilvara ran along the rooftops with seasoned dexterity. She leaped from one to the next under the cover of darkness. Below her, the streets of the city were quiet and empty beneath the moonlit sky. Her destination loomed in front of her to the north—Lathurn’s keep.
Normally on a mission like this her mind remained empty, but tonight was different. Ilvara was still grappling with the fact she was working with other people, people that were relying on her. Humans, no less. She found the thought incredibly strange as it echoed in her mind, their names lingering on her tongue.
Alistair and Brianca should be leaving soon, she thought, sparing a glance toward the rapidly shrinking inn building behind her, need to hurry.
The plan was simple. Ilvara would go on ahead and, using her acrobatic talents, gain entrance to the castle. She would wait for a bit while the paladins caught up on the streets, doing their best not to grab any attention, all the while observing the guard patrols of the inner courtyard. When the paladins arrived, she’d open the gate for them and they would enter the keep together to further track the missing girl.
Given her own experience with infiltration, she knew better than to expect everything to go perfectly. Especially given that, at least in Alistair’s case, he wasn’t especially stealthy in either of his bodies. The Brianca girl was a bit of a wild card, but something about her made Ilvara imagine she’d be at least somewhat more capable. She seemed more cautious and reserved than the more emotionally-charged lowborn boy.
Either way, Ilvara knew she was being forced into a new and uncomfortable role. She’d never had to work with others in this kind of capacity. The more time she spent around Alistair, the more this kind of thing was becoming a habit. For now, she hadn’t decided whether she liked it or not.
Ilvara ceased her spirited run across the rooftops as she now found herself just across the street from the towering stone walls. Apart from a few lit braziers, she couldn’t spot any guards watching the parapets, nor were there any in the street below.
Good, she thought with a growing smirk, I work better without an audience.
With a solid runup she dashed across the tiling and threw herself forward. Her hands soon felt the cold smoothness of granite brick as the elf managed to clear the street separating the city from the castle in one go. Ilvara felt herself slide down as the wall was more slick than she’d expected. For a moment she struggled to find purchase and her heartbeat quickened as she fell further.
She took a deep breath and applied a thin layer of magic to her fingers and toes. This technique developed by her people gave Ilvara the necessary grip to stick to the wall, not unlike a spider. Such power found as much use on the surface as it did deep underground, where her people had developed the technique to help with exploring caverns and other difficult spaces. If humans had the same powers, she wondered if they’d bother even building such brutish and simple walls like this.
Best not to turn down such a gift.
Ilvara continued up the wall slowly and carefully. She would have little recourse if she fell at a poor angle like this. Unlike other fae, elves lacked the ability to resurrect themselves, and so she had little desire to test her ability to land on two feet from this height. When she spared a glance beneath her, she couldn’t see the two paladins yet, but the elf didn’t worry yet. The humans had no other recourse but to follow the plan.
Up and over the wall she went. Feet on solid ground, she crouched low like a tiger ready to pounce. She was alone, not a soul in sight. Ilvara allowed herself to breathe a small sigh in relief before she proceeded further along. Her job was only half-finished. Now, she had to find the gate and find a way to open it.
This proved to be relatively simple as the gate wasn’t far away from where she’d climbed up. Before long she was on top of the gatehouse. Toward the city she had a perfect line of sight to the main thoroughfare and how it cut through the length of Adelgard. With this kind of view, anyone could easily spot visitors making their way to the castle, day or night. There was just one problem.
Ilvara leaned over the stone wall, squinting as hard as she could to see in the moonlit night. Try as she might, the elf’s eyes couldn’t spot her human partners anywhere on the road. Why were they taking so long? Voices from behind made the elf jump for the nearest shadow.
She wasn’t alone anymore.
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Alistair sat at the inn table, tapping his finger incessantly against the wood. He and Brianca sat there in darkness, the innkeeper having already closed shop and retired for the night. There they both waited as they counted the seconds after Ilvara had left to enact their plan.
He ran through the plan over and over in his head, with his tapping growing more and more intense every iteration. Not in his wildest dreams had Alistair, a lowborn, ever dreamed of sneaking into a lord’s castle. Paladin or no, this ‘plan’ they’d come up with seemed incredibly irresponsible, not to mention dangerous. But, as Brianca the law-abiding noble had convinced him, desperate times called for desperate measures.
Rozena, the daughter-errant they’d both been acquainted with, was missing. Evidence pointed to her being sequestered in the castle, and through lies and deception someone had tried to cover it up. For someone to lay their hands on a daughter was bad enough but to kidnap one was unthinkable. How the city wasn’t crawling with paladins sent by the Lady herself to rectify this was a mystery in and of itself.
The real clincher for Alistair was the strange magic Brianca had mentioned covering the city. While the two paladins lacked the knowledge to truly diagnose what the spell’s effect was, he’d noticed that the Sight wasn’t working since they’d entered the city limits. He had no way to observe or receive quests, nor could he look at Brianca and see any information about her as he once could. The Shadow user had said she was suffering from the same effect as him, and so it made Alistair wonder if this was a concerted effort to block the Lady’s magic from Adelgard, and if so why?
Of course, he could only come to the same conclusion as before. Somehow, the undead were behind all of this. Even if humans had the motivation to rebel, not even the richest noble would be able to convince one of the Lady’s chosen to cast such a powerful spell like this. Paladins and daughters both served the Lady, and through their service to her they served the Alban people at large. There would be nothing to gain from supporting a rebel cause as destabilizing as this, especially so close to the border.
The people of Isen knew how important unity was in the face of an unfeeling, tireless horde of monsters.
“Think that’s long enough?” asked Brianca, stirring him from his thoughts. In the darkness he could see the faint glow of her eyes, staring at him.
“If I sit here much longer, I’ll go mad.” Alistair practically jumped up from his chair. His eyes went straight for the doorway outside. “Let’s go.”
He had every confidence in Ilvara that she would succeed on her end. The elf had proven herself time and time again of her capabilities. If anything, his nerves leaned more on his own abilities and whether or not he was up to the challenge.
Alistair’s confidence remained shaken since Bredon, and he hadn’t been in a proper fight since then. By the door he’d stashed his pike and when he went to grab it, the young man hesitated. Was he truly ready for this? Could he be relied on to do the job properly this time? Dogan’s harsh words filled his mind with doubt.
“Alistair.” Brianca grasped him by the shoulder. His whole body tensed at her mere touch. “I’m sure your friend is fine. We mustn’t keep her waiting. Come.”
He said nothing back and firmly tightened his grip on the weapon. Alistair was grateful for the woman’s misinterpretation. It gave him the chance to stuff his feelings down somewhere deep inside him and remind himself of the task at hand. This time he wasn’t alone. People were relying on him.
For the sake of his family and friends, he couldn’t afford to freeze like that again.
Out the door and into the street they went. A cool breeze flew by and brushed against their cheek. The city had gone dark and eerily quiet. He resisted the urge to shiver, not from fear but discomfort.
“Do you see that?” Brianca asked, her finger pointed down the street.
Alistair followed her gaze and saw a single torch bearing its way down toward them. A guardsman, he realized. From his own experience, he knew men didn’t travel alone on patrol, and if the man was trying to abandon his post for a nap, he certainly wouldn’t be carrying around a light. No, the man had to be a messenger.
Did the viscount send word?
They closed the distance with the guard quickly. Alistair recognized them as one of the men at the gate. Beneath the moonlight his sickly pallor seemed even more intense. The dark rings beneath his eyes had turned into craters of the skin. Something horrible had afflicted this man, something unnatural.
Sickness and disease could be resisted by a paladin thanks to the grail’s power, so Alistair wasn’t so much concerned for himself as he was for the city at large. What was going on in the castle that the viscount had allowed this kind of rot to take hold? Was Rozena taken to fight with this pox? He shuddered to imagine the suffering behind those walls.
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“The lord will see ye now,” said the guard, his voice hoarse and weak. “Come on, I’ll take ye to ‘im.” On his backfoot he pivoted to turn around and almost tripped over himself. Men-at-arms weren’t known for their flair or grace, but it looked like the man could barely stand.
Alistair shot a glance to Brianca, his concern palpable. She shook her head and leaned in close to him.
“He’s lying,” she whispered. As she spoke she refused to let the guard out of her sight, one hand resting on the pommel of her sword. “Where he plans to take us I cannot say, but it is not to see any viscount. What should we do?”
Her question reminded him of something that should have been obvious. He was the senior here, not her. There wasn’t a Manus or a Broderick around to ask for guidance. Not even Ilvara was close enough to signal. It was just him and Brianca, a mere supplicant.
If there was ever a time to rise to the occasion, it was now.
Alistair’s hand instinctually grasped the Aegis token around his neck. No doubt the paragon would have some choice words to give right about now, and no doubt Wind was the same way. A feeling of anticipation, of anxiousness rose up from his gut. All his progress so far had prepared himself for this moment.
His grip tightened around the token and white light surrounded him. Brianca stepped back as he turned into the familiar red giant, a hint of admiration making its way across her features. Alistair looked down at her with one hand tightly grasping his pike, the other holding his shimmering blue shield just as strongly.
“Whoever wants to meet us, I say we properly go greet them,” he said, voice amplified by magic. “What say you?”
In the blink of an eye his partner had transformed into her own armor. The black suit of fey steel blended in almost perfectly in the dimly lit road. Yet, despite sharing the appearance of plate, the magical suit seemed light and flexible, much more so than a knight’s. To Alistair, it resembled the stylings of a roguish thief—built for speed and flexibility rather than defense. He didn’t know the powers the Shadow bestowed to Brianca, but he knew at the very least she was much the opposite of his burly body.
From her belt, Brianca readied a shortsword in one hand and a dagger in the other. She offered him a simple nod and gestured after the guard who, despite their transformations, had made no attempt to stop or wait for them. It was as if he’d been sent with only one goal in mind and he lacked the mental fortitude to deviate from it.
Together, the two paladins marched to find out the truth of who was really behind all this. With luck, they could end it all tonight.
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“Master says to get rid of the rest of the horses.”
“The magic woman’s?”
“No, all the horses. Master says we don’t need them anymore.”
Ilvara sat in her shadowy hiding spot, listening to the two guards beneath her in the courtyard. The two men spoke with strange inflection and even stranger vocabulary. Neither of them sounded like humans of this region. Their words and what they implied concerned her more.
She spared a glance toward the stables on the far side of the castle. There were still a few steeds in there, but from what she could see they looked unattended. A lack of proper food and water had caused the animals to look malnourished, with rib bones starting to show through their otherwise well-kempt hides. Not a single attendant or page was around either.
This reeked of something greater than just a kidnapping. It sounded more like a takeover.
Leaning over the side of the wall, she looked at these guards more closely. With only the moonlight and the light of a torch nearby, Ilvara had to strain herself to get a good look. They were sickly looking like the other castle guards they’d seen earlier in the day, but from this angle she spotted something strange on the back of their necks.
Bite marks, festering with black rot.
Thralls, she grimaced at the wound as it pulsed, of the vampires. And by the looks of it, well on their way to turning into ghouls.
Humans were susceptible to such powers of the vampire. A bite to someone uninfected, if not used to drain the victim of blood, could instead force the individual under the undead’s control. If left unattended, the thrall would eventually turn into the monsters known as ghouls, a bestial mix of human and vampire. The only desire a ghoul had would be to consume manflesh, becoming more of a wild beast than anything else.
She’d read stories about the subject, leftover from her predecessors. Geevshey elves had observed the many border conflicts with the undead in the past, making note of every detail, however minute they might have appeared. If war with the undead ever spread to the northern reaches, the matriarchs wanted to be ready. Knowledge was power.
Now, these infected men were standing in the way of their plans of stopping the undead. They were, as far as she was concerned, beyond help. Besides, more pressing matters demanded the elf’s attention. Alistair and Brianca had been waylaid—no other explanation could fit the circumstances. Yet, there was still a chance the ‘magic woman’ Rozena still lived, somewhere inside the keep.
Ilvara couldn’t afford to wait any longer.
A curved dagger in either hand, she dropped down from the walls and into the courtyard below. No other guards were nearby which allowed her the time to sneak closer to the men at the gate. She bided her time, waiting for the both of them to turn their backs to her, and then she pounced. The attack happened so fast the thralls barely had time to gasp before her blades sunk into their backs. Their bodies dropped to the floor with a soft thud, dark blood pouring out of the wound.
She peered down at the now dead men with a difficult expression. On the one hand they were obstacles that needed to be removed, but on the other, a small bit of pity seeped out of her otherwise cold heart. Perhaps it was Alistair’s influence on her, but for just a moment she regretted their deaths. This moment passed when she was reminded of the gravity of the situation. There were lives on the line.
Ilvara reached for the lever and pulled on it, hard. The creaking of chains meant the mechanism was working. The iron portcullis that served to keep the inner castle on lockdown slowly rose up and out of the way, opening the path for Alistair and Brianca. Still, the two were missing, and she feared they had somehow run into trouble somewhere in the city.
Her thoughts drifted to when they’d been making their way down the city streets and she thought she’d spotted something move in an alleyway. She swore she saw a figure, bathed in shadow, only for it to disappear in the blink of an eye. At the time she’d passed it off as an animal or maybe her nerves were getting to her, but now she was starting to believe the undead had a physical presence in the city. There was a chance that the Slough, the undead host, had gotten tired of hiding themselves. That they were ready for war again.
As much as she wanted to go and find the paladins, Ilvara believed the priority rested with finding the Rozena girl. The human warriors could look out for themselves, but the magic girl had been left to fend for herself for who knew how many days now. Every moment she spent in the clutches of the vampires, the less likely she’d remain alive. And, Ilvara surmised, if the daughter died then any chance they had of breaking the strange magical aura surrounding the city would be gone.
If that came to pass, the world wouldn’t have any idea of the coup that was happening in Adelgard. They would be unprepared for a proper invasion.
So, with a heavy heart, Ilvara turned her back to the gate and dashed toward the wooden doors of the viscount’s home, intent on finding Rozena—whether she be alive or dead.
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Alistair looked around in concern. The guard had led them not to the castle, as Brianca had ferreted out, but instead to a wide open space in the city’s market square. Along the way the guard had made no mention of the viscount, nor did he even try to make conversation with the paladins, further cementing their suspicions. Together, they watched the man disappear into a sidestreet, snuffing out his torch and disappearing around a corner.
Brianca still stood at his side, also on guard. They had little cover there, all of the stalls and crates having been put away at sunset. It gave them a great view all around though, and it let them see over a dozen figures emerge from the shadowy alleyways that fed into the square. These shadowy beings once illuminated by the moonlight could be seen for what they really were—vampires, creatures of the night.
These vampires maintained vaguely humanoid features. They shared the same body as humans, still had skin over their wretched bones, but the similarities ended there. Deathly gray skin, piercing red eyes, sharp and fey-like ears—all of it packaged together in dark robes and spiked, black steel plate armor. Among their numbers were men and women, all of them of various shape and size to match whatever they looked like before they were turned by whatever dark magic spawned them, and all of them wore feral grins of murderous intent as they sized up the paladins as prey.
One approached, arms outstretched. He, if he could be called a man still, stood a head taller than his cohorts and his bald top shined beneath the moon. The vampire motioned toward his fellows while he held a shield in one hand, his sword still in its sheath around his narrow waist.
“Welcome, paladins!” The vampire spoke with a deep and impressive tone, not at all what one would expect from a creature of the night. He sounded like a storybook hero would, boisterous and proud. “To our fair city of Adelgard. I’m afraid you came a bit earlier than expected, but no matter. My master, Arkas, has asked that we properly greet you, regardless of the status of your invitation.”
Alistair and Brianca shared a glance but said nothing. He steadied his grip on the weapons in his hands. Adrenaline pumped into his system as his chest heaved. Emotions were high as the stakes of this battle shot into the sky. The undead had arrived in force, it seemed.
The conspiracy was a ‘conspiracy’ no more.
“Well? Cat caught your tongue?” He taunted them, goading them to speak. The vampire’s mood seemed to dim, and he began to grow annoyed. “I thought you paladins were a righteous lot. No brave words or curses to say before we tear you limb from limb? How disappointing.” His fellows jeered in the background, launching more foul utterances at those they surrounded.
Still, Alistair and Brianca did not break.
Alistair noticed his partner shift, as if ready to move. “Do you have a plan?” Brianca whispered, still facing forward. She sounded steady, though he felt a hint of anxiousness. The wait was getting to her.
Without the Sight, they had no insight on the vampires or their capabilities. Even with it, they were outnumbered six to one. A tough fight, regardless of their experience as the Lady’s chosen. For a moment, he wished Broderick was there to steady them, to take the reins. The pressure on his shoulders felt enormous at this moment. A part of him wanted to pass it onto someone else, let them worry about getting them out of this mess alive. It sounded selfish, and it was.
Alistair took a deep breath and put that thought out of his mind. He didn’t need Broderick or Manus or anyone to tell him what to do, not right now. The moment he left Isenfell, he knew there was only one way this could go.
Their choice was simple—fight or die.
“We kill them all,” he said, voice filled with grim determination. “Starting with the idiot who won’t stop talking.”