Lord Dorchen was wearing his old combat robes and staring at his reflection. ‘How did it come to this?’ he thought with a sour expression looking back at him from the mirror. He had been so careful, everything would have been ready in two years. A lifetime’s work to return the House of Dorchen to it’s rightful place, ruined by chance.
He felt the door to his study being opened. His aid walked in and spoke in a quiet voice, “M’lord, all available men have been brought in. I have confirmation that we can start on your signal. The way is clear to the Center, your son is at the Thought-hub, and our agents in the keep are ready to bring down the wards.”
With a rueful smile, Lord Dorchen met the eyes of his long-time aid and asked, “How are the preparations for ‘Rebel House’ coming?”
Shaking his head, the aide responded, “There hasn’t been enough time. Lady Dorchen refuses to entertain the idea of leaving. The hidden production facilities haven’t been taken down, and there is still a trail to be followed. If the Populators are allowed to investigate, it’s game over.”
“Did we confirm what happened to our mages?” Lord Dorchen asked.
“Found by the military and the guards. They started with the mage who was responsible for hiding the arms shipments, from there they pulled the threads to find the rest. We haven’t found out what prompted the investigation, but there is no one left who can get our men past the walls. We’ll have to make do with the 1000 men on hand. In addition, I’ve armed everyone under your employ in the city. The original plan called for 5000 men just for the center.” The aide finished in a whisper.
Lord Dorchen nodded and said in a firm tone, “I’m aware. But desperate gambits are for desperate players. If we’re lucky, 500 will be enough to collect the Cosgrave heirs. We’ll need the rest to force the City Lord into defense. I’ll have to be in the keep to maintain the challenge. Are our forces ready outside the gates? We’ll need the army occupied.”
With a sigh, the aide replied, “Yes. The moment you declare, they’ll be teleported into position. Are you certain you want to do this? There is no way they are unprepared.”
Lord Dorchen straightened his back and turned to face his aide. Summoning the pride of Dorchen, he replied, “We will bring down their communications the moment I declare. They won’t have time to mount a defense. The Populators arrival forced my hand, but my resolve shall not waver. I will be the City Lord upon the new dawn. Our victory will buy us the time we need to scrub the evidence. The word is given, we begin in an hour.”
Mustering up some courage, the aid replied with a stiff back, “Yes, m’lord. Your will be done.” Then he left to attend to the preparations.
After hearing the door close, Lord Dorchen’s shoulders sagged as he looked back to the mirror. He had just needed another two years.
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Behind Nero was a window he could get through, if it were open. He may not know a lot of spells, but he could manipulate essence.. Closing his eyes, he probed his surroundings with his mind. Finding the latches at the top and bottom of the 4 foot wide window, he decided to start on the bottom. Pulling on the strings of heat floating in the air was easy as breathing by now. He packed the ambient heat into the latch, feeding it more and more. Unfortunately, while the latch was heating up, too much heat was dissipating back into the air. Releasing his control he thought, ‘This isn’t working.’
Nero decided to try the spell form that was used to gather water from the air. He’d just substitute heat in the parts where there was usually water. As he focused, he could feel the latch and the surrounding parts of the window give in and start melting. Since his eyes were closed, and he was facing away, he didn’t realize that a foot wide ball of fire had materialized directly on top of the latch. The surrounding air was being sucked in and caused everyone in the area to turn around to see what the hell was going on.
Luckily, everyone recognized what was happening, and decided to ignore it. In fact, when Nero’s attention shifted to the latch near the top, he realized that someone had opened it somehow. He looked around, and everyone was pointedly ignoring him. Aside from the disapproval in the air, no one seemed to be paying any attention to him.
Slowly ducking down to hide his movements behind the crowd, Nero got to see his handiwork with his own eyes. He had completely obliterated the lower latch, not to mention that he had melted and warped a good portion of the window. Glancing at the upper latch, he wondered ‘How the hell did they do that?’ The answer came to him as if he heard Nick berating him for being an idiot. ‘Telekinesis, I could have just grabbed the latch with my mind…. God damn it.’
He reached out with his mind, and he could feel the window. It was pathetically easy to slide open the window. He scurried through the window and closed it behind him. Feeling like a moron, he buried his shame and went through the room to the door. ‘Okay, I’m free. Now what?’ he thought as he went through his options. He could either try to find Nick, Mrs. Salvatore, or maybe try to find the army and help them. The two Cosgrave kids were probably closest. They didn’t have much of a lead on him.
‘I made the decision to do something. I’m not going to bitch out now. Stopping them from taking those kids, even if they're college kids, counts as something. It’s time to be a main character in my own story,’ Nero reassured himself.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Checking the hallway for soldiers, he hurried towards the front of the building. He had to dodge a patrol by clenching his psychic field tight and hiding behind a pedestal holding some big ass vase, but eventually he got there. Rather than going out the front, he went into a room with a window into the lobby.
The five guards were standing there waiting for something, and the Cosgraves were still bound. Realizing that he was late, Nero tried to come up with a plan. Looking around the room, he didn’t have any good ideas. His eyes found a nice shield on the wall with two swords behind it. Walking over, he tried to pull the shield off the wall, and the entire plaque that it was attached to came with it. With a ‘CRASH’ the entire display fell to the ground. The sound broke the silence so completely that Nero just stood there like a cat that knocked over a lamp.
Snapping out of it, he crouched down and went to peak at the lobby through the window. There were now only 3 guards with the Cosgraves and the man in Charge was looking toward the window he was hiding behind. Nero berated himself for not blocking the door, or at least setting a trap. His mind was filled with images of enemies being blown up while opening doors. All of the sudden, Nero had an incredibly dumb idea.
He hid behind the desk and closed his eyes. He expanded his mind to feel as much of the room as possible. Managing to feel the door being forced open, Nero reached out to the guards that were coming into the room. He couldn’t get a hold of them. It was like they carried a bubble of uncontrollable essence with them. They stopped in the middle of the room and looked around. ‘That’s their field of control,’ he thought. He didn’t need to control them though, he just had to stop them. Nero weaved a spellform to collect air and heat as tightly as he could directly between the two blurry clouds of essence. After a second or two, he felt it was hot enough, so he kept pushing air into it. Enough air in an enclosed space will expand as he heats it. He heard one of them say, “You feel that?”
Deciding that it was time, he started focusing on the temperature, giving it his all. When he felt his nose start to bleed, he let go. His sigh of relief was followed by a ‘Boom’ that caused the room to shake.
Peaking over the top of the desk, Nero was shocked. The center of the room was destroyed. And the explosion covered a 10 foot radius. The two guards were embedded in opposite walls, they weren’t moving. ‘That’s physics in action I guess. I just made a poor man’s fuel air bomb. Who knew a youth spent throwing cans of beer into the fire would lead to this,’ he thought with a grin. Nero walked over to take a closer look at the result of his first combat spell. The guards were very dead. Feeling a chill, he thought, ‘How would I stop someone from doing that to me?’
As he pondered how to combat an enemy mage, he heard call from the hall. “What the hell was that? You guys OK?”
Nero returned to the window for a peak, now there was just one guard and the man in charge. He cocked his head and thought, ‘There is no way this works twice.’
Finding an unbroken chair on the back wall, he placed it in the center of the room. Nodding to himself, he called out in a raspy voice, “Hey, get in here and look at this chair.”
Hiding behind the desk, Nero tried to repeat his performance. Closing his eyes and feeling for the chair, he set the spell form right above the cushion. Going slowly, he started gathering heat and air while waiting for his prey. He felt them pause at the door. Soon enough, they slowly walked into the room, and right up to the chair. One of them even whispered to the other, “You feel that?” This time Nero covered his ears while he poured as much air and heat into his spell form before he lost control.
Opening his eyes, he realized that this bomb shattered the window in addition to the two guards. ‘Holy shit!’ he thought as he admired the results of his hard work. He wiped his bloody nose on his robe, and walked back to the center of the room. Suddenly, he sensed fury coming from his left. Nero looked over to see an incredibly pissed Soldier staring at him through the destroyed window. Feeling cheeky, he said, “It was like this when I got here.” And then he bolted for the door.
Nero could feel the man hop through the window and give chase. Instead of running down the hall, Nero closed off his presence and focused it on the door. Waiting around the corner, he got his stolen knife ready. ‘This is just like clothes lining someone chasing you around a corner. You got this,’ he said to himself.
The man turned the corner with a sword in his hand, but ran directly into Nero, who already had his knife at chest level, and was braced for the impact. As they collided, Nero fell back with the full weight of a running man in chain mail falling on top of him. The man was twice Nero’s size, and bracing his feet for the impact did nothing. The sound of the sword sliding down the hall was the only good thing that resulted from the collision.
Nero pushed the man off and hoped to find his knife in the man’s chest, but he only saw a ripped tabard. ‘Fucking chain mail. Of course a soldier will have armor,’ he thought sourly, as he scrambled to his feet.
Setting his feet and raising his fists for the fight of his life, Nero braced himself expecting to be tackled. However, when he looked over, he saw the man comfortably taking a knee. Amused eyes stared at Nero, while the man’s hand wiped down the front of his chest like he was removing dirt.
“Boy, what the hell happened to my men?” the man asked while standing up. There was a flash of light from one of his hands, and his lost sword was returned.
Nero had played enough games to recognize a boss fight when he saw one. Taking the opportunity for some dialogue, he tried to split his focus. While he was visualizing an essence bomb behind the guys back, he said, “I’m pretty sure one of them was a lady, dude.”
“Last chance. Where are my men? What happened in the room, and what caused the explosion?” the man said, while lowering his chin and getting ready to charge. The man began to emit a red aura, and seemed to be powering up or something.
With a glazed expression on his face, blood began pouring from his nose, ears, and eyes and Nero muttered, “When you get to whatever afterlife they have here, tell people that I said something cool.” and then he collapsed.
The man had just enough time to utter, “Huh?” before the essence bomb went off behind him. He shot across the hall face first into the wall. Had Nero been conscious, he would have been very proud.