The next morning they arrive in the last remaining city of the Sacrosanct Empire. What once was a simple civilization on an island has now become a fortress surrounded by walls along the coastline. They are brought past the walls into the city before the general. A soldier hands him the note from Jim and he looks over it.

“I see, so Jim sent you guys to me. I guess I can’t turn down the group that slew the giant sea monster that’s been sinking my ships,” the general greets them.

“What sea monster?” Alcaeus asks; he is confused along with Drakthar, Kayde, and Jorge. They look at Xander and he shrugs his shoulders, pretending he doesn’t know either.

“So you guys want to help me take on the Black Sun Empire,” the general begins.

“Yes, and oh do we have a present for you,” Drakthar shoves the Cult of Chaos priest forward.

“Who is your tied up friend?” The general asks, not sure what Drakthar meant by a present.

“The man in your hands is a priest for the Cult of Chaos. He may have information about the Black Sun Empire. Well, anything from about two years back, but it should still be able to help,” Kayde explains rather hectically.

The general has some of his men take the priest to a place where he can be questioned.

He turns towards them and gets to it, “I’m going to level with you guys, if it were up to me, we would already be over there fighting to take back what is ours. Unfortunately, that isn’t my call. The man in charge is the leader of the Purity. Now, if something were to happen to him, I would be able to walk us into enemy territory”.

“So you are saying there will be fewer guards around the capital building tonight?” Kayde already knows what is going on here.

The general goes along with the joke, “yes I think there might be quite a few unexplained riots in the streets. It would really be a shame if something happened to the archbishop at that time”. They all watch as the general winks not so subtly.

They say farewell to the general and head into town to prepare their plan.

“I think the best way to get inside is disguised as guards. The thing is guards patrol in groups of two and there are five of us, so one of us should stay back this time,” Kayde starts to explain his idea.

Jorge volunteers, “I’ll be sitting out lads. I’m no good at being sneaky like the rest of ya”.

“Come on Jorge, what about the time we stole all the alcohol on the airship?” Kayde tries to get him to reconsider so he isn’t stuck with Alcaeus.

Jorge takes another drink of gin, “We both know lad, I didn’t do a thing. Ya took care of it for me while I waited”.

Kayde gives up on convincing Jorge to come along and gets back to the plan, “We will split up into groups of two. Xander, you go with Drakthar, with your abilities it should be easy to knock out a couple of guards and steal their uniforms. I’ll go with Alcaeus. Once you get their uniforms stash the guards away where they won’t cause us any trouble. Then, once the sun goes down we will reconvene outside of the capital building where we will walk in like we are supposed to”.

“Alright, we can do that. Sounds like a good plan to me,” Xander agrees after hearing Kayde’s idea. Drakthar nods in agreement.

“Sure, why not? It’s not like it will be hard with the invisible man over here,” Alcaeus sarcastically comments.

The two groups go their separate ways to get guards’ uniforms for themselves. Alcaeus and Kayde find an alleyway that is right by a set of tall bushes. They wait in the bushes for a patrol to come through the alleyway. Alcaeus’s knees start to get sore from crouching so he sits down instead, assuming they are going to be there awhile. Right after he takes a seat, guards show up. Kayde immediately goes invisible.

Alcaeus gets back to his feet and readies his whip, waiting for the signal. He sees both of the guards simultaneously gagged and he emerges from the bush wrapping his whip around both of them. Once they are bound Kayde and Alcaeus each knock one out.

They pull their victims deeper into the alleyway and start to strip them of their uniforms. Both of them were on the taller side, so there is no uniform that comfortably fits the shorter Alcaeus. “The ones that came through couldn’t be a little more my size,” he comments as he looks down at the pant legs dragging on the ground. He rolls them up so that it doesn’t look like he doesn’t fit. They hide their bodies and move on.

Meanwhile, on another side of the city, Xander and Drakthar ready their own plan. They stand in the middle of a crowd holding hands.

“Can we do this without holding hands?” Drakthar is embarrassed to be doing this for so long while in a crowd.

“Oh come on, no one is looking at us. Just be patient it is not going to last much longer,” Xander tells him to deal with it.

Xander focuses off into the distance at two guards who have been standing at their posts for a while.

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“I don’t understand why we have to wait so long,” Drakthar comments eager to get out of this situation. Xander half listens to Drakthar as he finally sees what he has been waiting for. Once one guard brushes against the others hand he switches him and Drakthar with the two guards.

Suddenly the guards find themselves in the middle of a crowd wearing nothing, but their undergarments. People look at them creating a commotion giving Xander and Drakthar time to get away now wearing the uniforms.

“This thing is too tight, it restricts my movement,” Drakthar complains as they run.

“They do not build guards as big as you here, this is as close as you are going to get,” Xander points out as they disappear into an alleyway.

Three hours later, after the sun has gone down, the four of them meet up in front of the capital building, it stands tall above all the other structures within the city.

“Okay guys when we walk in, we need to do so in a guardlike formation,” Kayde tries to make it so they don’t look out of place.

“Guardlike?” Alcaeus doesn’t quite get what he means.

“Yeah, like a square, or two lines of two you know. Or we could do the arrow-like thing where we fan out, but that would be better if we had an odd number of people, if we did it with four we would look kind of stupid. Anyway, let’s go with the square,” Kayde eccentrically explains what he means.

They walk up to the front in the shape of a square. They enter and start to head up the stairs.

Once they get to the fifth floor a guard halts them, “what are you four doing here?”

“We have a message for the archbishop,” Kayde lies.

“Tell me the message and I will deliver it for you,” the guard follows the standard operating procedure.

Kayde changes his tone; he says as imperiously as he can, “This is sensitive information soldier! It is for me to tell the archbishop directly”.

The guard salutes, “Of course sir, go on ahead”.

They pass by the guard into the hallway. Unlike the floors below it, this one is lined with fine paintings hung on the walls, sculptures atop pedestals, and precious jewels in cases throughout the hallway. It is clear that the archbishop resides on this floor.

As Kayde rounds a corner at the front he collides with a female servant. The tea on the tray she was holding spills forward onto Kayde.

The servant is panicked; she quickly pulls out a cloth and starts to dab at Kayde’s uniform, “I am so sorry sir, I ruined your uniform”. She looks up as she is trying to clean the uniform and gets a better look at Kayde’s face. Her hand stops, terrified of cyborgs, especially one with a look as menacing as Kayde’s.

“What are guards doing in the living quarters?” The servant asks, her words shaky out of fear.

“I think you don’t want to ask questions. It’s best if you stick to being a servant and we will be the guards,” Kayde gives her an awkward thumbs up. The servant nods and retreats down the hall.

They continue until they notice a bridge inside the building leading to a set of doors guarded by two heavily armored men, not the type that could be knocked out without a loud fight. They crouch around the corner and begin to plan how they will get past the guards.

“That has to be the archbishop’s room,” Kayde insists.

“Also I don’t think his personal guards will fall for our fake guard routine,” he suspects, given they are with him every day.

Drakthar starts to take his uniform off, “If that’s the case, I’m taking this thing off”.

“Yeah, me too,” Alcaeus agrees as having to readjust his breeches every few minutes has irritated him. All four of them shed their guards’ uniforms and put them in a nearby dumbwaiter.

Xander, with a resolved expression, tells the others, “I am so close to getting my revenge. So that is why I am willing to put myself at risk to make sure it is accomplished. This is where I am going to leave you guys behind. I will teleport myself in between the two guards, grab them and switch us with you guys, who will be waiting down the hall. That should give you time to kill the archbishop and escape through a window using Kayde’s rope ladder”.

Drakthar and Kayde look at Xander seriously, but Alcaeus laughs silently, “you don’t get to play hero just yet kid”. He pulls out a smoke grenade and hands it to Xander.

“Once you switch us with them, use it and join us in the room,” he explains.

“Yeah, I will do that,” Xander accepts the smoke grenade, surprised at Alcaeus’s uncharacteristically kind gesture.

They set themselves up at the edge of the bridge. Xander is now in between the two guards. Before they can notice the man amongst them, they are already at the other edge of the bridge, looking at three strange men entering the room they were supposed to be guarding. Xander sets off the smoke grenade and starts to run. Suddenly, he feels a tug on his cloak stop him in his tracks.

Inside the room Kayde, Alcaeus and Drakthar see the archbishop sleeping peacefully in his bed. Alcaeus takes the rope ladder and throws it out the window.

“Come on Kayde get it over with those guards are going to burst through those doors any second,” he whispers furiously when he notices Kayde paused, standing over the man.

Kayde hears the guards screaming from outside and realizes the way he kills the archbishop doesn’t matter anymore. He pulls out the shotgun-like gun he found in the ruins. The barrel is pointed at the archbishop’s face. Kayde pulls the trigger, relishing the messy painful death the man deserved. The archbishop’s visage is morphed, his head blown to pieces. Small chunks of flesh scattered around the bed.

Drakthar and Alcaeus are already halfway down the rope ladder when the door bursts open. Kayde, who is at the window sees Xander without his cloak; having shed it to evade the guards.

They enter seconds after Xander; he is now at the rope ladder. The guards notice the desecration of the archbishop, causing them to freeze.

Kayde reaches the bottom, leaving Xander on the rope alone. The guards peer down, ready to follow him.

Xander unsheathes his sword and cuts the rope above him making it so they cannot be followed and begins to free-fall towards the ground. Drakthar notices the disaster and catches him with outstretched arms.

Alcaeus sees how Drakthar is holding Xander and cannot resist commenting, “Oh that’s so cute”. Xander pushes himself out of Drakthar’s arms and they flee the scene before the guards can get a good look at any of their faces.

They eventually arrive at the military base on the island and find the general.

“It’s done,” Kayde informs him.

The general grins widely, “looks like we’ll be marching into Black Sun Empire territory boys, and he is going to be our ticket there”. The general holds up the Cult of Chaos priest that is looking rather ragged.