When we woke up, things had gotten worse. Of course they had.
The sun was still low in the sky when the sounds of distant detonations shook me out of sleep, though I could forgive it for that when I woke into Jasmine’s arms.
The moment had to end at some point, but I held her for a little longer when she stirred awake, stretching it out as long as possible.
Eventually, though, we had to get up and face reality, and it wasn’t looking pretty.
“Those are explosions,” Jasmine said, frowning. “Combat already?”
“The Church fucked up.” I stepped into the attached bathroom, intent on at least making myself presentable for the next flavor of war we were going to have to deal with. “Right?”
“They did,” Jasmine said, joining me as I washed my face. “Since their ritual failed to work last night and they were incapable of acquiring the loyalties of the nobles, they just turned half the city against them.”
“Not to mention Seb,” I muttered. “He has the loyalty of a bunch of the commoner cells, and I’m pretty sure he has a vendetta against the Church. Granted, he also probably has one against the nobles, but he was just essentially controlled by a woman from the Church. Might be more than half the city against those fuckers.”
“That is also true. We should—“
A sharp cracking sound followed by the rumbling of a building collapsing combined with the almost imperceptible shake of the floor beneath us to signify another explosion, cutting Jasmine’s words off.
“Mmm. That’s not good.”
I nodded. “We should probably see what’s going on, right?”
“We should reconvene with the others first.”
“Makes sense.”
I wrapped up my morning routine as quickly as I could before changing into clean clothes that I had Jasmine to thank for, and then we were off.
Jasmine had given the rest of the people here the run of the place, which seemed to have gone fairly well. Despite having never lived in a place like this before, the commoners had been polite and restrained in their use of its facilities, and they’d figured out the general layout of the place.
Some communication must have gone out in the night that I’d missed, because Jasmine led me towards a specific room where we found most everyone gathered together.
Two commoners, Orchid, Lukas, Alex, Kyle, the Lord and Lady Rayes, a few nobles I didn’t recognize, and Jasmine and I. Together, we made up a little over half of the entirety of the strays that had escaped the clutches of the Church, the others having been returned to their households.
Jasmine’s parents greeted her with a little wave as we came into the room—a glance around revealed it to be something of a meeting room, with everyone sitting down around a circular table—and I felt a twinge of jealousy flick through my heart. The couple that’d given birth to me had never acted like that.
It passed soon enough, and then we had other things to worry about.
“Now that we have everyone here,” the Rayes matriarch began, “we must address the issues that we have grown all too familiar with over the past day.
“House Alzaq initiated the events during the royal ball two nights ago, during which the late Lord William Alzaq was revealed to have taken part in a plot to destroy the Crown. After a day of conflict, we learned that much of the conflict was driven by the Church, potentially working together with one side or another—“
“To the best of my knowledge, sorry to interrupt,” Orchid cut in, his throat apparently healed enough to speak now, albeit with a bit of a rasp, “To my knowledge, the Alzaqs weren’t working with them. But that was me, and there’s a lo tof things they didn’t let me know.”
“We will take this under consideration,” Lady Rayes replied, not missing a beat. “However, the possibility of cooperation between Church and noble is one that we must consider. Furthermore, we must address the issue of what our faction does.”
“Our faction?” one of the commoners asked. “I don’t recall accepting that.”
“I understand if you may feel alienated from the nobility,” Lady Rayes said. “Unfortunately, I believe that the safest place in the city is with our group at this current time. Due to the instability of the situation—“
As if to punctuate her statement, another building collapsed in the distance, this time accompanied with the piercing screech of someone’s oath kicking into gear.
“—it may be unsafe to exist in the city for the time being.”
“It has been unsafe,” the commoner bit back. “Maybe not the Church or the nobles fighting, but what’s the difference? We live, we struggle, and we die, every day and every night. What difference does it make if the struggle comes from your action instead of your inaction?”
“The difference,” Lord Rayes said, “is that we may be able to effect change.”
“For what it’s worth, you’ll have stronger oathholders on your side if you stick with us.” I didn’t even realize I had joined the conversation until I was halfway through the sentence. It was as if I was one of the autonomous carriages, my oath driving me forth and giving me the words to use.
“And what of the others? The people without oaths, the ones limited from doing so by your people?”
“I’m not a noble,” I said distantly. I would’ve lashed out in rage at that even just a few days ago.
“You’re not wrong,” Jasmine added. “The distribution of knowledge relating to oaths has been disgustingly limited for decades, but we can change that. As to the others that you seek to protect, you can lead them to our property.”
“We are very open to using this area as a refuge,” Lord Rayes said. “So long as everyone remains civil, we want to protect as many people as we can.”
“That’s… acceptable,” the commoner said, his voice calming. “I can round my people up.”
“With that out of the way,” Lady Rayes said, “we need to get a grasp on the situation. Fleur?”
A noblewoman dressed in elegant robes with the Rayes crest on it—a woman that I didn’t recognize, at that—stood to speak.
“My older sister,” Jasmine whispered to me. “The primary heir.”
“And I never met her before?” I whispered back.
“We’re not close,” Jasmine explained, still quiet. “Fleur was always traveling with her tutors. There wasn’t much of a home life to be had with her.”
“I did some investigating,” the woman who’d been introduced as Fleur said. I could see the resemblance to Jasmine—the same blonde hair, the same eyes, a similar build—but there was a coldness in her eyes and body that differentiated her from my favorite noble. “The Church’s oathholders have been active for some time now. Attacks on the noble sector commenced roughly two hours ago, and the nobles are responding House by House. As of now, there appears to be open combat in the streets. Interestingly enough, there has been a lack of activity from the Crown—not even a denouncement of the movement by the Crowned King.”
The Church hadn’t fully failed, then. The ritual last night had supposedly been meant to enable them to end the existence of the Crown, but I was pretty sure that the sacrifice made by that Crown soldier had been enough to stop that from taking place in its entirety.
If the Crown hadn’t leveraged a response yet, though… maybe part of it had managed to go through anyway. Maybe it had been something else.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Whatever the case, the Crown had a problem on their hands now, and that problem was big enough that we were going to have to take part in holding it.
“Thank you, Fleur,” Lady Rayes said. “As my daughter mentioned, there is currently combat that approximates open oathholder warfare in both the common and noble sectors. There has not been an organized noble response, and we were unable to liaise with many other Houses.”
“Fucking figures,” I caught Alex muttering.
“That said,” House Rayes’ matriarch continued, “we cannot ignore the reality of the ongoing situation. If anyone would prefer to take shelter here, that is acceptable, but we must organize a response.”
“Response how?” I asked. “You want us to fight them?”
I could do that. I knew I should’ve felt some level of hesitation, known that there were many amongst the Church’s number that were more than a match for me, but I’d gained power recently and lost my attachment to those kinds of feelings. There was a hint of second-guessing buried somewhere in my psyche, but right now it was as significant to me as a mosquito bite was to an Altered beast.
“Not just that,” Lady Rayes said. “We need people on evacuation. As mentioned before, there are many people in Dakheng who are actively being affected by this fight that need our assistance.”
“To that extent,” Lord Rayes added, “the Tayan Adventurer’s Guild has reached out towards us. We are as of yet unsure how long will elapse before they are able to send adventuring groups here, but rest assured that you can be counted as one of their number for the time being.”
“The Guild?” Fleur spat. “Father, why was I not told of this? You know as well as anyone else that they are jackals preying on those who they cannot strongarm into the Crown’s forces.”
“That they may be,” the patriarch replied, “but they are willing to support us, which I must point out the Crown currently is not. A Crown organization to weed out the uncontrollable they might be, but they are separated enough from the seat of royal power that they can still provide monetary and offensive support. On the other hand, Tayan’s military, so inextricable from the Crown itself, is currently unresponsive because the Crown is as well.”
“Fuck me,” Fleur said, the profanity sounding unnatural coming from a noble like her. “If there are no better options, we must accept the offer that the TAG provides us, then.”
“We already have,” Lady Rayes said. “To anyone who is willing to participate, the TAG will make it worth your time.”
That seemed to be enough for the two commoners, at least. They didn’t raise any further concerns, though both of them excused themselves shortly afterwards. Jasmine’s parents didn’t seem to have an issue with that, which was nice to see. Nobles, yes, but reasonable ones at least.
After a little more discussion, a fair chunk of the nobles that I didn’t recognize relegated themselves to evacuation duty as well. It made sense. There were a lot of people that could get hurt or killed by the fight between Church and noble, and they had to be moved somewhere out of the way, somewhere with actually good construction and defenses worth giving a damn about, which commoners weren’t really given access to. If anything, I was surprised that so many nobles were actually volunteering for the job.
On the other hand, that left us with a pretty small cohort of people that were actually willing to get out there and fight. The same adventuring party that we’d had the past day or so—the core four plus Orchid—as well as Fleur and Lord Rayes. Only seven of us against however many people would be out there.
It felt like enough. If I had to be honest with myself, it felt like I was enough. It might’ve been overconfidence, but there was something that just felt so insignificant about the conflict going on outside. Sure, there were real people out there being harmed and harming others and the result of this battle might determine the fate of the kingdom, but it was like I was watching ants fight over who had the right to the breadcrumbs scattered across the floor.
We could be so much more than this. I was so much more than this. If I had to deal with the problems, I would, but it was more of an annoyance than anything else.
Even now, I could recognize that there were flaws in my logic. I’d obtained more power at some point, yes, but in no way could I be completely confident that I could wipe the floor with all the opponents we had. I was underestimating the threat and not processing it properly and a thousand other things that should’ve been red flags for my thinking process normally. A noble’s arrogance, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to care.
No, not quite. The thought came to mind as if implanted there, like it was both my thought and not mine. There was an edge of madness to the thought. An edge of ruin.
Not a noble’s arrogance.
A god’s.
I shivered. That way lay dangers, and yet somehow I couldn’t quite shake the idea.
“Lily? Hey, Lily?” Jasmine poked me in the shoulder, shaking me out of my mind.
“Sorry,” I muttered, shelving my thoughts for the time being. “What’s happening?”
“We’re determining a plan of action,” Jasmine said. “On where to attack, where to defend.”
I looked up, realizing slowly that pretty much everyone left in the room was looking at me.
“Oops,” I said. “Okay, we have a plan?”
“I do not want this girl on my mission,” Fleur declared, her voice cold as ice. “She will get someone killed if she acts like this.”
“I can handle myself in combat just fine, thanks,” I said, her words sliding off the wall of separation I’d accidentally built between myself and reality. “If you would rather I work alone, that’s fine too.”
“Absolutely not,” she snapped.
“Right then, guess I’m on.”
“As I was saying,” Lord Rayes said, clearing his throat, “we are currently determining where our forces would be best utilized.”
“Are we attacking other Houses or the Church?” I asked. It didn’t really make a difference to me. There was no good side to take in this fight. “Maybe the Crown?”
Fleur looked like she’d bitten down on something particularly sour. In another time, I might’ve felt a vindictive satisfaction at pissing off a noble, but now I could feel the lack of that sensation acutely.
Something was wrong with me, and I didn’t care enough to figure out what it was.
“We will not be fighting the Crown,” Fleur said. “I agree with my family on the subject of its failures, but the Crown’s strength is one of the few things preventing Tayan from going to the wolves at our borders.”
“Sure,” I replied. “In that case…”
“This is an opportunity and a risk packaged into one event,” Lord Rayes said. “As any good opportunity is, of course. We must take action against the Church, that much is clear—descriptions of the ritual they commenced indicate that their actions could have destroyed much of Tayan.”
“The opportunity comes in that we will gain leverage with the Crown,” Fleur continued. “In order to take advantage of this, we could ensure that the traitor House does not survive the night. Furthermore, we could—“
“You realize you’re talking about killing this guy’s family, right?” Lukas cut in, pointing at Orchid.
“Not my family,” the noble in question rasped. “They… killed me. Tried.”
“That is not a concern, then,” Fleur said. “We can gain leverage with the Crown through this method as well as exterminating the rats of the Church. It has certainly been long enough with them on our backs.”
“We’re still trying to work within the system then, are we not?” Jasmine asked. “I keep on telling you—“
“This is not the time for that,” Lord Rayes said. “We can discuss other options later. For now, the Crown must survive.”
I looked at Jasmine, a couple things clicking into place, and warmth filled me. Had she planned on destroying the Crown to change the status quo? Even I hadn’t considered that as my number one option.
“So you’re saying we hit the Church,” I said, closing my eyes. “That’s doable.”
If I focused hard enough, I could vaguely feel the oaths of the combatants out there. There were so many of them, noble and Church alike, and with a start I realized I could tell them apart.
Most of the noble oaths had a distinctly artificial feel to them, as if they’d been grafted to their souls, but the Church’s oathholders—I was assuming it was them, at least, given the way that I knew Chosen never actually sought out their oaths—had oaths that grew more naturally, more like extensions of themselves than a separate connection that had been forced open.
The new against the old, huh? The multifaith Church had been around far before the continental war, I knew that much, and their manner of treating the gods with respect had long since fallen out of fashion. These days, oaths were tools first and foremost. Seeing that there was an actual difference in the way the oaths functioned was interesting but unsurprising.
One of them was going to come out on top, and I had a sneaking suspicion which one it was going to be.
“There’s fighting not a kilometer from here,” I said, opening my eyes. I was fairly sure I had cut someone off in the middle of their sentence, but I really couldn’t be bothered enough to give a damn. “Church and noble. I don’t know which nobles they are, but they’re losing. Want to go there?”
The number of the artificial oaths I was seeing were dropping rapidly, but they hadn’t had the numbers advantage to begin with. The nobles were all separated, all of them—even the comparatively less assholish ones like the Rayes household—trying to figure out how to best advance their own interests first, save the kingdom second.
Disgusting. There were commoners there as well, I was pretty sure, and while I couldn’t track who was who, the commoners had leapt to the defense of their people as quick as anything. Despite having fewer resources, despite living under the oppression of the nobles for their entire lives, despite having circumstances that should’ve promoted the concept of “everyone for themselves,” they had more cooperation with each other than the nobles did.
“I would not be opposed to that,” Lord Rayes said.
“How do you know this?” Fleur asked.
“Don’t worry about it. Is anyone opposed to going?”
Nobody was. Even Fleur didn’t give any resistance beyond a hard stare.
“We have carriages here. I can call for a few to get us moving.” Lord Rayes stood up from his chair, ready to move.
“That won’t be necessary,” I said. “Is anyone not ready?”
“What?” Fleur asked.
“I’ll take that as a no, then. Here we go.”
I closed my eyes again, but it didn’t hinder my sight. I could feel the oaths of every last person in this room, feel how they connected and moved with every moment. If I looked hard enough, I could almost see the gods on the other end.
This time, when I brought us into the liminal space of Inome’s domain, it was easy. I still had to make an effort to activate it, but it was a far cry from the difficulty I’d had yesterday.
Moving us a kilometer over was also simple. I pulled on my oath, my oath pulled on me, and then I twisted it just right and the space around us shattered back into reality.
The seven of us stood in the midst of a broken street, watching as a small group of nobles fought to their last against a squad of a dozen Church oathholders.
“What are you?” Fleur asked.
I didn’t turn to look at her when I replied.
“Ruin.”