Certain things transpired earlier in the afternoon, while Jon was sleeping, and it was those things which shook the city — and reached Damian’s ears.

Half of the Order’s forces present, you see, were due to be pulled out of Stave.

— Three hours earlier.

The priestess had returned to the abbey attached to the cathedral by eight in the morning, and now she was leaving again at noon. Yesterday’s events still hadn’t settled in her mind, but she had no time to ponder on it. The Order was still sieging Castle Portwatch, and it was her job to keep the troops in line; her mere presence reminded everyone that Lumina was watching, and to these devout troops who pledged fealty to no lord but Her, a reminder was enough to get them to straighten their backs and liven their pace.

She took the footpath going around the outside of the cathedral. Repairs to its domed roof were still underway.

The damage reminded her of all the death inflicted by Kinesia that day. Many people died inside the cathedral itself as the roof caved in. Did so many people have to die? Was our vaunted holy barrier always so flimsy?

— Why did Lumina not help them, and yet She helped me?

She left the grounds through the broken gate, which had been disassembled and left on the wayside to be picked up and replaced. She made out the dent in the grills where the knight captain’s back had slammed into. It was a miracle that the man lived through that.

Kinesia … was such a monster. She was exactly the sort of person the Order existed to put down, but even in that, they had failed. It was Jon who’d killed her, after all. One man with a shank managed to put down someone who’d taken out an entire squad of the Order’s elites. Unbelievable!… but also humbling.

The world was a vast place, after all, and she’d never left the confines of Stave.

She made her way to one of the barricades closest to the cathedral, about a ten-minute walk away. There were very few people on the streets, and the few people she saw hurried their way out of the general vicinity of the castle.

Pops of gunfire echoed from the distance. Those were probably the defenders trying to snipe the Order’s knights and commanders. The Order would shoot back in reply, but there was only so much they could do against an opponent with the height advantage.

She reminded herself that she was among those targets the enemy snipers would happily claim. There was no need for her to visit the most dangerous places.

The barricade she arrived at was one of the smaller ones, sandwiched between two buildings, with one building between them and the castle. As the enemy had no line of sight of the barricade, it was the safest one. Messengers and supplies also passed through it to get to the other barricades, so it had become something of a logistical checkpoint.

Hence, it made sense that she would find a well-decorated messenger on a horse, arguing with the station sergeant without even showing some respect and getting off his horse first.

She liked to think of these types of messengers as harbingers of hassle and trouble. Why, they always wore shining silver armor with gold-gilded pauldrons, flaunting their blue capes and saying things like —

“I bear a message of utmost importance from Central! Let me pass!”

How strange. Her inner voice perfectly overlapped with his.

Seeing that the station sergeant couldn’t take it anymore, the priestess stepped in. “It’s a good afternoon, good sir” —

The messenger turned his head, and a desperate smile flashed from his face. “Oh! Lady priestess, please! I must reach the main command post at once!”

The priestess raised a hand to calm him down, all the while desperately hiding her displeasure. “What seems to be the message? I may elect to ask a favor from the sergeant and let you pass if it seems to be urgent enough.”

The messenger clenched his teeth, as if a feather had been added to his already heavy burden. The message itself was not something to be publicly announced — but he really didn’t want to get off his horse! Getting on and off took time, and —

“Well?”

Lumina damn it all! He finally got off the horse, putting one blasted foot on the ground after the other. He swallowed his reluctance as he turned and approached the priestess, stopping five paces away and bowing slightly.

The priestess approached him, and as he continued to bow, he spoke. “Central has given orders to withdraw half the troops stationed here and march them to Saros.”

What, all of a sudden? “You don’t happen to know why, do you, sir knight?”

“I’m sorry, lady priestess.”

This was … worrying. She knew that the discovery from yesterday would be enough to spark a crusade, but it should take at least a few weeks to consult with all the commanderies under the Order’s authority and determine who would be sent where and when. The reason for this sudden relocation, then … no, she couldn’t even begin to guess.

“Thank you.” She stepped away from the messenger and faced the sergeant. “Let him through.”

The messenger got on his horse and rode away, leaving the priestess pondering … and distraught. With half the army leaving, they were going to lose too much strength, and they wouldn’t be able to attack anymore with any certainty of victory.

Still, it should take a few days to round up all the men and supplies for the trip. Could they push for an attack tonight? But their preparations weren’t enough. Every option was bad, but the only chance they had was to attack soon … even if that chance was slim.

Damian scooped up pasta with a spoon as Jon, Amani, and Alyssa listened. “I’m about this much sure” — he raised a spoonful of pasta — “that the lord’s pulled some connections in the Order’s higher ups and gotten them to march half the army off to Sisters-know-where.”

Amani’s mouth flapped open and closed. “Lord? Lord Humble?” she said. “But … he kindly listened to my request to try for the Theater.”

“Westeren nobility are good liars, miss,” Damian told her. “The more jolly they are, the more suspicious you should be.”

“How sure are you?” Alyssa asked. “If we’re going to kill a noble, we better be damn sure.”

“The books don’t lie, lass — or at least, the books of the lord’s business partners.” He smirked, feeling a little smug about what he was about to say. “If I didn’t know the people I did, no one else would figure it out. Royal pain to make a full picture of how money moves when you have to make sense of hundreds of books, you see, but for the people I know” —

“Yes, yes, you’re very well connected, Sir Quill.” Alyssa waved her hand as if wafting away Damian’s repulsive air.

So, it’s true. Betrayal sank deep in Amani’s chest. It was a tense, constricting feeling that made her unconsciously stop breathing. “So he’s an enemy, too, then,” she muttered.

“Great! I’ve always wanted to kill a noble,” Alyssa exclaimed, hoping to cover up Amani’s bad mood. “I don’t suppose he’s holed up in the castle, too, is he?”

Damian shook his head. “It’s worse. He’s under the protection of the Order.”

A palpable silence descended on the room. Any attempted assassination on the lord would result in a direct conflict between the Order and the Theater; the chances of a death would be high. Such a thing was considered taboo, even between two ostensibly opposing … ‘religions,’ if you could call the Theater one, anyway.

They were like constantly squabbling siblings who would join forces at the drop of a hat if any third party intruded.

If a death ever occurred in a fight between the Theater and the Order, it was common sense that the aggrieved Sister would have the right to smite the one who’d delivered the killing blow — body and soul. There’d be nothing left to recycle.

“I don’t suppose you could just snipe the man from a tower or some other,” Damian said.

“You’re the sharpshooter between us,” Alyssa shot back.

“You know that guard detail must be at least capable of swatting bullets out of mid-air with their swords, don’t you?”

Alyssa twisted her eyebrows. “Then why are you asking me to snipe?”

“The Two Houses,” Jon spoke. His steady voice caught everyone’s attention. “Can we take them out?”

A smirk slowly crawled up Damian’s face. “Good one, lad. We’ll just cut the lord’s hands if we can’t get to the lord himself.”

That wasn’t what Jon was thinking. Their original mission had always been to take out the Three Houses, and he was just trying to remind everyone of that. Of course, it was also becoming increasingly likely that they’d have to take out the city’s lord shortly afterwards, but he didn’t like to think very far ahead, at least not when he couldn’t see the path before him.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“Though, the Order, don’t forget,” Alyssa said, “they’re besieging the castle. It may very well be that they’ll finish the job for us.”

That would be a mission completed, or rather, a serendipitous case of a mission completing itself, but… “What if they fail?” Jon asked.

It was a question they couldn’t ignore. The Order had already once exposed their weaknesses when dealing with powerful individuals — or, more properly, Kinesia. She may have been an unstoppable juggernaut fueled by Eternal Vengeance, which, admittedly, did not make many comparisons fair, but it was the Order’s response which showed just how inexperienced they were.

Certainly, the knight captain and his elites were seasoned veterans, but that didn’t mean they had the specific experience necessary to face monsters like Kinesia — and neither did Jon. He was lucky that he’d gotten to observe Kinesia’s fighting style for an extended period of time thanks to the Order’s elites’ sacrifice, and doubly lucky that Ravena had decided to casually cripple Kinesia’s spirit by telling her how much of a let down she was.

In Castle Portwatch, you see, were Lords Wiz and Bowyer — two of the most powerful men in the city, and not just in terms of authority and wealth.

Lord Bowyer carried the strength of a hundred men, and his armor was said to be nigh impenetrable. “I’m sure he’s just reinforcing it with a Skill,” Alyssa added. This didn’t bode well for Jon; Skills were a shorthand version of a specific kind of magic, but more importantly, they practically had unlimited fuel. The activation conditions may be unique, and perhaps they might even be severely limiting, but such a restriction didn’t sound like it applied to Lord Bowyer.

Fighting him would be like fighting a bear who knew martial arts, or maybe even worse.

Lord Wiz, on the other hand, was a retired war mage. If he had any Skills, no one knew what they were. The only thing anyone knew was that he could seemingly use an unlimited diversity of magics. “Could be Mana Manipulation,” Damian posited. “There’s no other way. He should be long dead, otherwise.”

He was 87 years old by now, while Lord Bowyer was just shy of 50. Of the two, Jon was a lot more worried about Wiz; there were too many uncertain factors to the man, and the fact that he used to be a war mage didn’t make it better.

They were normally the living artillery pieces of an army, which was also why they were more likely to be singled out and targeted. Assassins were a favorite response against mages; they would sneak in and take them out at close range, where the mage’s primarily ranged specialization left them defenseless.

If Wiz survived this long as someone constantly targeted by assassins — either in the battlefield as a war mage, or out of it as a lord — then it was clear that he had some manner of close-ranged defense. Considering his aptitude in magic, that kind of “defense” was more likely to be of the “blow ’em to smithereens” kind.

Against these two lords, the Order might not be able to win, and that wasn’t even counting their personal armies.

Bowyer’s House Guard wielded the firepower of the noble equivalent of a regional arms dealer. Everything from pea shooters to volley cannons and experimental rocket artillery was on the table — and even possibly already set up on the ramparts of Castle Portwatch. Were they to unleash their munitions, every immediate block around the castle would be rubble come morning.

On the other hand, the House of Wiz had stuck to the ways of tradition, training generation after generation of mages. Training even a single mage cost about as much as equipping a hundred soldiers with firearms, but they had considerable advantages: unlimited ammunition, incredible tactical and practical versatility, and significantly lower logistical costs.

Even if the Houses’ combined troops ran out of small arms ammunition, the fact that Wiz was capable of fielding living artillery was enough to offset any tactical advantages the Order should have gained.

Now, with the Order’s forces getting halved, it looked like the siege was going to last many months. That, or the Order would have to commit to a premature assault at the soonest time — perhaps by the next day, even. In such a case, they would surely lose.

“Alright,” Alyssa said, “suppose they won’t finish the job for us. Say we assault the castle on our own.” She faced Damian. “I don’t suppose you have a stock of fire stone enough to blow open the castle doors, do you?”

Damian chuckled. “I’m afraid not.”

Infiltration as an option got thrown out the window within short order, as well. Their only hope at this point was to wait for one of the lords to stoically stare out a window, at which point either Jon or Alyssa could snipe them.

It was doubtful that either lord would let their guard down in front of a window, however. They could only hope.

Silence descended on the room once again — and once again, the silence was broken.

The doors slowly creaked open. Guns and knives flew out of their holsters and sheaths, pointed and readied for the intruder who’d, somehow, unlocked a supposedly locked and barricaded door — the pole jammed up against the door knob had fallen to the side without anyone noticing it.

The face revealed as the door swung all the way open, however, was the least expected.

“Good evening, all. Sorry for the intrusion,” the priestess said. “If you would please put those away? I’m quite uncomfortable at the moment.”

The guns and knives slowly slid back into their homes. “What do you want?” Alyssa asked, letting her annoyance be known.

“I’ve come to make a proposal,” the priestess replied. “May I come in?”

The priestess sat down among killers. She had already forgiven all of them in her mind — but that didn’t make her any less nervous. She’d come here without any guards, and, well, Damian Quill was here.

He may have been a former Theater director, but because he wasn’t currently one, and the fact that he was at the head of a city-wide syndicate, himself, had landed him among the Order’s Most Wanted list.

In other words, the priestess was sitting right beside a valid target for arrest … and she couldn’t do anything about it. Obligation screamed at her to do her utmost to bind this man in thick coils of rope and lead him to the gallows, but it was all she could do to try and forget he was even in the room. She went here to secure the Theater’s cooperation. She didn’t need a fight.

“So?” Alyssa said.

“Half the Order is marching to Saros,” the priestess said.

“Okay?”

“We’ve decided to attack tomorrow night.”

“Okay.”

“I request your cooperation in the assault.”

The table was silent for a moment. The priestess had said ‘I’ — not we, but ‘I’.

“Is this official?” Alyssa asked.

“No,” the priestess said.

Damian chuckled. “You’re a straightforward one, aren’t ya, lass?”

She pretended not to hear that. “As you might assess, if our forces are cut in half, we will have no chance to conduct a successful assault, and it will become a protracted siege.”

Alyssa sighed. “What will you do if they find out you were here?”

“Let me deal with that,” the priestess said — hiding a smile. Alyssa’s question was proof that she still cared for her. “We both know that with your current agents, you would need a sizable distraction to even approach the castle. I’m offering you an opportunity to take advantage of that distraction.”

Alyssa sighed. It was as good a plan as any… Well, they didn’t have a real plan quite yet, but with the inclusion of the Order’s grand distraction, it should be trivial to take advantage of one of the many sally gates and secret routes at the foot of the castle’s outermost walls.

She turned towards Jon. The man was cupping his mouth with a hand, seemingly in deep thought over something. “What do you think, Jon?” Alyssa asked.

“Huh?” Damian blurted. “You’re not going to ask me?”

Alyssa flashed him an annoyed look. “Oh? You’ll be charging in with us, then?”

The man had his own interests to look after. He’d intended to help in some way — the fall of the Houses were in his interests, after all, financial and otherwise — but he would be quite prone to dying in the close confines of a castle.

He raised his hands in surrender. “Ahaha! Caught me there!”

Alyssa rolled her eyes before turning back to Jon. “So? You seem to be deep in thought, there, Jon.”

He pulled his hand away from his face, bringing it to the table and tapping away as if calculating something. “We get in the castle … then what?”

Alyssa frowned. If Jon, the most focused and direct man he knew, couldn’t see a direct route to victory, that was going to be a problem. “How do you mean?”

“Can we kill them?” Jon said.

There were sighs from around the table. Once again, there was the root of the problem: Lords Wiz and Bowyer were difficult to kill by themselves, and much more difficult to kill when together.

On the other hand, if they missed this chance, it would be near impossible to get into the castle: there was no telling if either of the lords would ever leave the safety of the castle, and the castle’s engineering made tunneling under it impossible. They’d have to look for someone with some kind of stealth Skill to get them close to the walls without getting shot.

— Magic stealth? Too costly.

“We don’t really have a choice, do we?” Alyssa said, making a resigned sigh.

Despite being a temple of assassins, why did the Theater have a severe shortage of people lacking stealth Skills? She could only curse Kinesia and her accomplices from that fateful day. If it weren’t for them, they wouldn’t even be having this problem!

The Theater did have one saving grace, however.

Beside the crackle of a fireplace, Constable Wiz made himself comfortable on a rocking chair, wearing little more than pajamas and satisfying himself with the minutiae of a newspaper.

The door to the room swung open, and on the other side, Crestfall Bowyer stood tall, donning seamless armor from head to toe, and seemed to barricade the room’s doorway with his broad frame.

Bowyer bowed his head so as not to hit the top of the door frame as he entered. “You’re still slacking here, old man? What will your men think of you when they see you like this?”

Wiz continued to read the paper spread before his face. “They’ll say,” he replied, “ ‘that old man deserves it.’ ”

“Yecch! The Order could attack any second, and you’re just taking it easy! Your students will run the first second the attack starts, and if you’re not there to keep them in line, I’ll do it myself!”

Bowyer left with a humph, not even bothering to close the door. The chilly wind was coming in, and Wiz didn’t like that.

He stretched out his hand and conjured magic, using Mana Manipulation and Mana Sense together to find the world’s natural mana currents and effortlessly tap into them for his own uses — such as closing a door.

It slammed shut as a gust of even stronger wind pushed against the chilly air coming in. Much better.

He looked back at the newspaper. It was a foreign print from an eastern country called Kevsik, where snow fell for most of the year and the prestige of magehood had yet to die out. The civilization of that place could only be said to be a little better than the Aranai, but he was content with that.

Embedded in one tiny paragraph in that newspaper was the name of his daughter, Tacit Wiz. It seemed she’d won some kind of magic competition among the local nobility.

She had left the nest nine years ago, and he was the fool who’d kept trying to chain her down, trying to make her stay. Her mother — his wife — had died a long time ago, giving birth to their fifth child.

That was just the first death of their family. As the years passed, all the rest of his sons died,

— Died in battle; overdosed on wisdom potions; found dead in an alley.

… until none remained.

He believed it to be some kind of curse. Tacit had been right to leave. Her unyielding belief that the family legacy was more dead weight than a blessing … it had hurt his ego, once, but now, he had come to believe in it, as well.

They used to be a prestigious house who raised the next generation of war mages for the king’s army. With the change in the times, they had fallen and become the region’s foremost producer of certain … ‘unstable’ medicines and elixirs.

He didn’t know how it happened.

It was all so fast.

The House of Bowyer should just die.