Ray Fresk drank from the finest wine he could from one of the most exquisite belled glasses ever produced in Valoria, crafted from the hard, forced labor of those prisoners unfortunate enough to be pitted in depths of Avarich. Everything, the wine, the glass, they all cost a fortune. But, when you were a noble lord in Midhelm, luxuries were standard.

Naturally, some questioned his desires of secession from the once holy empire that gave him so much wealth. They wondered how they could escape from the nation that almost conquered the entire world. Well, something bad was coming. Worse than any consequence their treachery might endure. It was almost… palpable. Even Ray’s no good, useless heir of a son could see it. Midhelm had thrived on its rapid expansion. However, the past two hundred years or so saw Midhelm losing territory rather than claiming it.

First, Soucrest and Norcrest broke off, followed by Donta-Montal. Now soon, with Ray’s doing, the south would once again break off to form their own nation.

Ray sat at the head of the conference table, joined with eight other essential nobles making up the southern crest of Midhelm. With their mutual support, leaving would be easy. But Reagle Novac was stubborn and would seek to reclaim his land to not fail like his generation’s past. Despite all of the Novacs’ failures, they remained king ever since Peyton’s Death.

The Novac’s didn’t play the system of old. Of course, the Novacs were fine warriors, but best in the kingdom? Of course not. Their Soulsmithed sword, Glory’s Edge, was the real crown of Midhelm. Anyone with that sword could rule the nation. Many were as excellent as Reagle with the sword, but few had a sword that could carve through stone and swords as if they were twigs.

To Ray’s immediate right, Jon Tench of House Tench wasted a fine glass with water instead of wine. He vowed sobriety after his wife had left him. And now, with Novac’s strict pact with the Church of the Square, no one could remarry. Meaning poor Jon had no way of producing an heir unless he could convince his wife to come back.

Jon was, by far, the easiest candidate to sway. At least, he used to be. Ray promised him the ability to remarry legally under their new nation, but the man refused to fall back into his addiction, claiming he still loved the woman who wronged him. Damn fool. His vice was an easy grip for Ray to hold him by, but Ray feared Jon would slip from him to the others.

The room was filled with allies, yes, but also Ray’s enemies. Few in this room wanted nothing less than first place. The fools hated that Ray was first, and they were all tied for last in their plan to break free from Reagle’s empire. They didn’t understand that being first was an impossibility, so long as Ray lived, and that they should already be content with being last, for even participating yielded them great rewards.

Sitting next to Jon was a younger noble lord, Addicus of house Penoble. Manipulating the youth was easy, especially for those desperate to learn under those experienced. With his father’s death six months prior, the young lad had much to learn and little time to do so. So Ray put him “under his wing.” In other, more honest words, Ray put a collar around his neck and made him bark like a dog whenever he so pleased. Every now and then, he would throw a bone his way, offering advice that may grant him a few extra coins every month, but he was Ray’s nonetheless. An easy vote to get, and the poor bastard didn’t even know his mentor was the one who commissioned his father’s death.

I’m not evil, Ray thought, swirling the wine around in his hands. I’m only calculative, planning out the perfect country. Whether he knows it or not, his father's death is the foundation of which my new empire will be built.

“Are we going to get on with it?” an old, grizzly voice said. Once a man in excellent form, Faithful Tucker O’Neil was now a decrepit, saggy shell of the warrior he used to be. “I can’t be held too late this time, so, if you have business, best we get it over with.”

“Of course, Faithful,” Ray replied apologetically. After his time serving as a warrior, Tucker officially became a Faithful, a sort of noble priest. Despite that, he was surprisingly critical of the church. It played into Ray’s hand, but Tucker was a dangerous ally to have. When he last dropped the blade, he figured out how to pay another to lift theirs. He ordered more assassins than Ray, yet he always denied such allegations.

Ray coughed, gathering everyone’s attention. Everyone, well dressed in fine, sky-blue or darker colored vests and jackets, offered Ray their eyes, giving him the floor to speak. “The perfect time to establish a greater empire is closing in, and it’s coming fast. Finally, our freedom of rule will return to us. Our people will benefit as much as we will. So I ask of you lords for your confirmation in me as the leader of this charge.”

“Why do you assume leadership?” asked Mack Huffman, a noble near the back, far end of the table. Not much could be said about him, other than he had one of the longer stretches of land critical for creating their new front.

“I second that,” Tucker growled.

“Third,” Linus Kenderson said, sitting next to Tucker. Most of these lords were unimportant individually. But collectively, they could stand a chance against King Reagle. He needed them all, so he couldn’t thin them out. Of course, having the meeting be composed of nobles, they all wanted the leadership role for themselves, apart from Ray’s anchors in Addicus and Jon.

“Shall we bring it to another vote?” Ray asked, sipping his wine to demonstrate his confidence in that certain process. Sweet, sweet wine and the faces of those who already knew the outcome.

He received a growl from many of the room.

“What?” Ray asked.

“You win every vote,” Linus complained.

“That’s true, but I offer a count every time and—”

“Enough!” Olsen said. The brute of a man looked more warrior than noble, frightening to those afraid of monsters. How could Ray be frightened of a monster when he raised one? His one-armed, freak-of-a-son Jase tarnished his family name for as long as he has been born. He’d rather have his son be a brute than whatever he already was. “We’re sick of your games. We want a majority vote.”

“A majority? You can’t be serious. Are you? The last ten votes we had, do you know how many candidates received a vote? Seven. Out of nine. We would never get anywhere, especially with six of you so prideful you’ll never vote for anybody other than yourselves.”

“How about we can’t vote for ourselves?” Mack asked.

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“Ahh! Finally, a good point! Well, how about this?” Ray pulled his sword out of his sheath, then dropped it on the table. “How about we do it traditionally? I’ll challenge anybody here for the right to rule. I’m half drunk on wine, yet I’m confident out of everyone here that I’m the strongest warrior.”

Tucker growled. “Out of this room…” he muttered, steaming red. “Yes, perhaps you are right. But you claim tradition, yet what happens when a warrior outside of our circle challenges you? You may be the strongest out of this room, but of our empire? You’re not even a drop in a bucket compared to the men who serve in your own army.”

Ray smiled. “Fair criticism, but I assure you, meritocracy as we once knew it isn’t anything like it used to be. There’s a reason the Novac’s reigned for so long, and it’s not because they are the best warriors in Midhelm. Our meritocracy is dishonest, but that isn’t where our kingdom’s fault lies. No, my noble friends, it’s a much bigger issue than that. Right now, our nation is about to collapse, and if we don’t pull out soon, so will the lives of us and our people.”

“He’s right,” Mack said reluctantly. “My people keep getting poorer. Reagle’s taxes are getting out of hand, so much so we can barely tax them ourselves without crippling them. We’re supposed to be Reagle’s most important keys to running his city, but we’re rusting! Sooner or later, he’ll have no use for us at all. The people need to be back in our hands.”

A worthy sentiment to my cause, Ray thought. Personally, I want the power of it all. I want to be like Reagle, even if it’s only a little bit. Fighting against him… that’ll be a blast.

“So,” Ray said. “I’m taking charge, whether you vote for me or not. My merit is superior to the rest of yours, and we will do it my way. If you wish to leave, do so now, but you will be our enemy as soon as you walk those doors right there.”

A great threat, Ray almost laughed out loud. As if he would let anyone leave this meeting and leak their intentions. He chose those doors specifically, for he had already given his men instruction on disposing of any cowards who decided to opt-out. Fortunately, no one lifted from their seats.

“After we take our first step of independence, we will need allies. Specifically, Soucrest if we can convince them. They are along our border and are more gullible and consistent than either Gleon, Dormoor, and Wargon out west. We will be playing the sympathy card, which might convince King Ranun to aid us in our effort. I don’t know if that will be by donation of weapons, by men, or by both, but his help is critical to achieving any success.”

“How can we be sure Ranun will help us?” Jon asked.

“He doesn’t seem to mind Reagle’s wrath, given he housed the Midhelm prince into his military. What more is helping people in need? His empathy is his weakness, and we could exploit it.”

“We should appeal to him before we officially secede,” Tucker moaned, scratching the wrinkles of his balding, gray-haired head. “And by appeal, I mean guilt him. Send some refugees his way, have them say how horrible Midhelm treated them, then when we break off, we’ll seem like the good guys to them.”

“Excellent,” Ray said. Finally, some decent advice. The difference between the experience of Tucker and the wannabe philosopher of his son was steep. Tucker knew what he was doing. He was coy, calculative. He didn’t pretend to know more than he did. “We’ll send some soon after this meeting.”

Ray called over a servant girl from the back. She filled his glass with wine first before attending the others that requested some. Whoever was the first served tended to look more important to outside eyes. And sure, it was his own palace they held this meeting, but a trick was a trick, no matter the context behind it.

“Should we talk about our army size? I assume you all managed to gather as many men as you could in preparation for the coming days,” Ray said, twiddling the glass of wine in his hands. He loved the whooshing, spinning of wine in the palm of his hand. He felt like a god, controlling the tides of his destiny, enough to concoct a hurricane in his very grasp. “Twenty thousand men from house Fresk, well-trained soldiers. Ten percent are archers, another twenty percent are calvary.”

“Ten thousand,” Tucker said. A lot, considering his house had one of the smaller cuts of Midhelm. “Similar percentages.”

“Five thousand,” Addicus said to Ray’s disappointment. He could be manipulated, but that trait often came with sheer incompetence. Ray sipped his wine, ignoring the deficient number.

The other nobles started reading out their army sizes and percentages, reaching a sum of around a hundred thousand men through the nine of them. It wasn’t an astonishing number, but enough to hold off Midhelm and play the defensive for a year or so. If they could manage to do that, even for a season, they had a chance of succeeding in the coming war.

Ray finished his glass of wine, setting it on the table. His servant girl was out of the room, likely retrieving another bottle from the pantry downstairs. No matter, he felt himself getting a little too drunk anyway.

The doors creaked open. The hinges whistled with the motion. Ray half-expected his servant to have already returned, but he was surprised to see a different figure, one shrouded in the dim hallway lighting behind her. A lady in a silver dress inched into the room. Her dress came down in the shape of a bell tight around her calves, rising high enough to show some skin above her ankles. The color of her dress was the same silver from the Midhelm flag. Perhaps that had been a coincidence. But she stared hauntingly into the room while the nobles eyed her back nervously. She had long, blond hair flowing under her hood attached to her dress.

And she carried a Soulsmithed sword. Pink mist leaked as she pointed directly at Ray. Ray looked to Tucker, wondering if this was one of his assassins, but he looked as genuinely confused as everybody else.

“Speak your name and your employer!” Ray demanded of her. He eyed the sword he placed on the table. It wasn’t Soulsmithed, unfortunately, but that shouldn’t matter. Across from him was a mere woman, which automatically ruled her out of a contest between warriors. But, if she wanted a show, if she wanted to get a taste of what the real world really was, Ray would happily oblige—

He gasped, his eyes snapped down to look at the tip of the blade, continuously shoving deeper into his stomach, impaled seemingly out of nowhere. Ray gasped for the breath he suddenly lost. The blade… he looked for its owner, his eyes lifting for what felt like miles searching for the hilt of the sword. It stretched down to where the silver-dressed assassin stood across from the table.

The blade contracted, and Ray collapsed back into his seat, feeling his wound, bathing his hands in his blood.

The assassin’s sword snapped back into its standard size. Her sword could change lengths in a mere flash, evident by how fast she stabbed Ray. Her gaze looked disappointed, like she aimed her sword as if it were a gun, and she had wanted a bullseye. She leaped on the conference table, landing softly, standing straight up as she stared down at Ray.

A dress without any heels? Just plain shoes? What was the point of the dress?

Ray looked in horror as the nobles either pushed their chairs back out of fear or drew their swords. Regardless of their choice, the assassin casually murdered them with mere flicks of her wrists. Her sword’s ability to stretch a great distance proved too deadly, as she killed nobleman after nobleman.

Addicus, dead to a slit throat. Tucker, heart pierced through, blood leaking out of the slit through the back of his chair. Mack, Jon, Linus, and everybody but Ray, were dead. Slaughtered to a fanciful woman with a Soulsmithed sword.

“Your sword!” Ray groaned. Blood had reached his throat from his earlier wound, and it seeped out to coat his chin. “You owe all of this to your sword! You wouldn’t have beaten me in a fair fight!”

“A warrior owes everything to their sword,” she referenced an old, religious saying, only she replaced the word his with their.

“Your voice,” Ray muttered. “I know you, don’t I? What, are you one of my servants I’ve had my way with? Was I not a good master?”

Ray knew he was already dead. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t fight before his last breath. Verbal assault would do while he was too weak to lift his sword.

She stared at him blankly. Such a pitiful look. Humiliating. Dying to a woman? I was raised better than this.

Seeing her up this close, Ray finally recognized her face. Her short nose, her strong chin. Long blonde hair. Ray looked at her with a mix of horror befuddlement. “You? I know you! You’re an assassin? You’re the king’s da—”

She pierced through his chest with the expanding metal of her sword. Though this time, she didn’t miss his heart.