--------------------------------Two Years Later In the Kingdom of Vernicus -------------------------------------
“I apologize Lady Luxia the Archbishop isn’t taking visitors at the moment.” A bookish young man cried out while quickly chasing behind a woman striding in silver armor through the chapel.
“Lady Luxia, please wait! I’ll let the Archbishop know you’re here and get you his next availability.” The bookish clerk seemed to desperately want to delay the confident woman’s relentless pace but he seemed afraid to touch her. Or even get too close to her following a safe distance behind as he pleaded.
Despite his qualms, Luxia made her way to the large double doors marking the Archbishop's chambers and kicked them open without hesitation revealing an obese balding man laying on a red velvet couch completely naked with four young women all around him. All four seemed a little too young.
Saying her first words since entering the church Luxia spoke in a calm but firm tone as she pointed her sword toward the naked archbishop from the doorway.
“Die, pedophile.”
As Luxia spoke a beam of white light flew out from the tip of her sword and impaled the stunned archbishop in the chest. Although the blade of light impaled him the screaming archbishop seemed very much alive as he began rolling around on the ground crying while the young girls began to cover themselves.
The archbishop let out a couple of words between screams, rotating between “Wait! Mistake! And HELP.” Luxia didn’t speak again as she continued to shoot beams of light which seemed to cause massive amounts of pain but little actual damage. Finally, as the archbishop began to get close to fainting Luxia moved to cut off his little brother which kept the Archbishop awake for another ten minutes. When he began to pass out again Luxia delivered a sword thrust through his wailing mouth, ending the wails along with his life.
Afterward, Luxia calmly looked around to see Church of Radiance Paladins looking at her with mouths agape. As if they were watching a vicious beast who had just escaped its enclosure.
Luxia spent little time explaining herself simply saying, “Pedophiles deserve death,” before walking past them. No paladin moved to stop her. After all, she was the infamous Silver Lioness Luxia. The leader of the paladin group Justice, a newly formed organization that worshiped a recently rediscovered ancient god who wanted to spread peace throughout the world. Justice was known for housing fanatical zealots with none being more well-known than their leader Luxia.
Truthfully, hidden behind Luxia’s confident appearance she was worried. Although she had managed to create her Justice Paladin Order within her first year and had managed to grow it to over ten thousand members since, she was fearful she wasn’t expanding fast enough. She always had those words of her creator echoing within her mind. “I have great expectations.” Those words had driven her forward these last four years, pushing her to always take any scrap resembling an opportunity to grow and solidify Justice’s foundations. She pondered over every word he had spoken whenever she had time.
Luxia found every syllable her master spoke seemed to hold some unspeakable meaning for her to decipher. She had quickly found what her Master had meant when he said to find an unquestionable motive. After making a visible stand against some abusive nobles running a slave ring, Luxia found her organization explosively increasing in members. So much so she even had to open three more branches in other kingdoms. Her master had obviously seen the growing undercurrent of outrage among the commoners as the nobles began to more frequently test the boundaries of their power, pushing their vassals to work harder and pay more taxes. Her master's wisdom was indeed incalculable and although she had only met him once she strived for the day she would accomplish enough to be rewarded with another meeting.
Luxia thought about another thing her master had said almost as an afterthought. Alongside the wonderful gift of a name, he had told her she was his second servant. Luxia still couldn’t tell if he was warning her about another rival, or something deeper. One thing Luxia believed for certain though was that she would not be the last of his creations. Since her creation was over two years ago, there may already be dozens of her brothers and sisters in the world molding it for their father to step into. It was obvious he wanted internal conflict after all he hadn’t given her any way to identify his other children. Knowing her own abilities Luxia doubted any of her siblings would be found lacking. As the second born she had a duty to succeed after all she had a head start over the majority of her siblings so of course, her Lord's expectations of her would be greater.
Luxia brought herself back to the present. Looking forward she found four dozen of her Justice Paladins standing at attention outside the church. Dressed in silver armor dawned with a white sash, these were members of her personal division. Known as the Claws of Luxia these elite soldiers all had level two talent in at least one magic field while most also had combat skills equivalent to that of a sword adept. Luxia didn’t say a word as she walked past them and mounted her white horse Bella. Her guards quickly followed as they all took to their steeds in unison before falling in behind her in perfect order. Their actions clearly showing their high level of practice and refinement.
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Luxia led them out of the church's cloister before the group continued on, riding silently for half a day before coming up on a large oversized castle surrounded by some makeshift houses and tents. Luxia took in the image of her order’s stronghold, Light’s Bastion. With a thousand paladins stationed within and many more servants and unofficial members, Light’s Bastion was bigger than some cities even before taking into account the massive spread of refugees and hopeful applicants who settled in the castle's outskirts with whatever they could bring. Luxia had been gifted this castle by the King of Vernicus, Holden Vernicus. It had once belonged to a corrupt Duke who had been executed to help quell some of the peasant’s outrage his overt greed had caused. Although with his death some of the outcry quieted King Vernicus knew it was quietly smoldering and the duke's entire region was still filled with animosity towards the crown. A sentiment that could ignite a rebellion at any time if left to fester.
When Luxia had appeared as the image of a perfect paladin and had grown her organization explosively even in the face of some sabotage from the nobles, Holden Vernicus had seen a great opportunity to pass off this troubling region and gifted the duke's old castle, which was just collecting dust at the time, to her. He had immediately seen the region quiet as Luxia’s very presence seemed to fill them with hopeful obedience. Since then he had continued gifting Luxia with some of the surrounding regions even bestowing upon her the title of Baroness much to the anger of some of his court.
Luxia led her men through the gates as surrounding people let out cheers, acting like fans of a celebrity more than followers of a paladin order. But who could blame them? Every time Luxia returned they would hear of a new rotten part of society she had cleansed with her holy light.
Luxia dismounted before making her way back to her private area of the castle, affectionately known by her followers as “the Lioness’ Den.” Here she was met with two plain-looking individuals in grey robes. One was a middle-aged man while the other could only be described as an old hag.
Luxia didn’t even look at them as she began changing out of her armor.
“Report.”
“Yes, my lady,” The hag, who had a deceptively sweet voice responded. “Since our last report, we’ve grown our network into two more kingdoms as well as significantly grown our number of available contacts within the Numima Empire and the other four kingdoms where we already held a significant presence. However, our efforts to gain a foothold in the Hervalle Empire have remained unsuccessful with our last attempt costing us the lives of twenty agents."
Luxia remained unphased. They had been trying and failing to enter the Hervalle Empire for a year now. Still the loss pained her, those twenty agents were far more valuable than even two hundred of her paladins. Each one was selected and trained with the utmost caution, the resources funneled into every single agent by the time they matured was no small sum.
“What happened this time?” Luxia motioned for her to continue.
“Our agents flipped one of Lord Davim’s close confidants. Davim, being as cautious as his reputation indicates, realized something was wrong. Our last report from them simply mentioned “the Hand” was coming for them and requested extraction. When the extraction team arrived they found all twenty of them in an inn's basement each of them cut into pieces with some clear indications most of it was done while they were still alive.”
“Someone who can ambush twenty, second level mages and ones who are gifted at subterfuge at that is no small feat. Clearly, our suspicion Hervalle has a well-developed surveillance network was well founded.” Luxia voiced her conclusion.
The middle-aged man spoke up to concur. “We think the same, my lady. Although they plucked out twenty of my Eyes this time it seems as though if we had sent more they would have fallen as well. I recommend we turn our focus to other territories for now and return to infiltrate Hervalle once we’re more developed.”
“Lucille, what’s your opinion?” Luxia turned to ask the old hag.
“The resource cost to take infiltrate Hervalle will no doubt be immense. Although I recommend no longer attempting to infiltrate at least for the time being we should invest thoroughly in the surrounding regions to prepare for a possible counterattack. I have no doubt this “Hand” is interested in finding out who was behind our agents. I spent a great deal of care to make sure the surviving report was not tracked but it would be inefficient to put in the same effort for every report to come from Hervalle as just securing this one report forced to me kill off quite a few of our information runner to avoid leaving any traces.”
“Very well. We’ll take a defensive stance with Hervalle for now then while working to gather anything the surrounding territories might have in regards to the Empire and this Hand.” Luxia decided. “As for the other territories where things are going well, double down on our separation from those cells. I don’t want this Hand to stumble upon one of our foreign agents and trace it back to us.”
“Yes my Lady. It will be done.” The two then bowed before leaving Luxia alone to think.
The Hand? I wonder if this is one of my siblings. Luxia let out an oddly uncharacteristic smile. It could even be the firstborn. Luxia’s smile grew wider.