We stared at Clause.
Everyone did, but Anna and I did, especially because his words made absolutely zero sense, and it made us both want to shake him.
I didn’t know the guy, and Anna didn’t seem very close to him, but her was his brother, which mattered to Anna, and the result of him standing in front of a powerful monster would, in turn, affect me through Anna and not just because I would need to be there to comfort her after he died.
Someone had to send the dumbasses of the world to the afterlife, and so far, telling people about it had just freaked them out, like the [Priests] and probably the Hunters, and the poor guard who had been out of his mind in pain too… In fact, most of the people here were probably fucked up because of me a little bit, considering the monster was only alive because I ran away after it got back up.
Another failure to save people. Another cause of death.
Maybe all of us were cursed, and maybe Death herself was too, though if she were, she was a monster to share it.
Unaware of my thanatological internal monologue, Anna walked up to Clause and shook him in our place, her soft little hands doing her best to shake her larger older brother.
Her tiny form was not visibly strong, and she was light and dexterous—not a chonker like me. Height and arm length also had a big impact on her, and the art of shovelling had taught me early about the immense power of leverage and long arms.
Clause was apparently not built like a brick shithouse either because he shook a little despite the plate armour, but he was at least strong enough not to move his feet. He was also apparently charismatic as hell because he managed to look totally unchastened by his sister doing her best to shake him out of his shoes while not quite shouting.
“Are you a moron! You might have a class, but you're not a warrior, you idiot. You’re the future [Baron]! What moronic idea got you thinking that it was a good idea to fight a capital M Monster?”
“Unhand me! Get- Get off, will you? Don’t make me use a skill on you,” he threatened dispassionately, “You’re making a scene.”
Anna did not let go, so with a very light mutter, he grabbed her hands and lightly pulled her off of him, whispering, “[Keep Your Distance].”
Everyone but me and he took a step back, and I could see her eye twitch as she followed the command. It just passed me by, a strange feeling, like the command wasn't appropriate for me, letting me keep my feet placed. No one even seemed to bat an eye… well, except for Anna, and on my head, an annoyed noise from Selly as she shuffled back a bit.
“That trick won’t work on a monster, Clause; you will know they’re not subject to your authority.”
Huh… I suppose that makes sense. I guess I’m not really one of his people. I’m not even a subject of the… Empire. Gosh, that’s weird. I wonder what makes a person subject to it. Is it just birth? Would I be one if I were normal? It can’t be because I’m a mage. Anna stepped back…
I almost groaned another question I had no answer to right now. I could ask, but It was starting to get annoying. The more I levelled, the more my mind found questions it wanted answers to. My growing intellect and wisdom drove me into holes instead of making me smart, neither any good for finding answers as a barely educated dirt digger.
All of us kept watching the two as they continued to make more noise at one another, Clause trying to explain while Anna continued to push him down like she was stuffing him in a jar.
“I’m simply here to hold the-”
“Hold the only fire brigade up while the city burns and you have a whole precinct following you like puppies? The civilians are fleeing, and the guards are here instead of retaking the city so we can get a brigade formed?” Anna chastised to no avail.
“I suspended them due to the nature of the fire and the presence of hostilities. Suspending them will save-”
“I have no doubt it will save lives! But why are they here? The Monster is covered. We have [Hunters] for that!”
“The Hunters Have retaken a sixth of the city as of my last update. I imagine now it will be more like a third. Freeing the guard to help clear streets and make fire breaks. We are taking ground. The fire is too big for a brigade anyway, not that you're unaware of that, considering you’re here,” he told her pointedly.
“They’re best suited for this!”
“They’re best suited to clearing things beneath them! Their numbers are focused on where they can make the greatest impact.”
“And you're somehow best suited to fight a Monster? To hold a sword like you’re an [Knight] in shining armour?” Anna asked dubiously.
“I am,” he said confidently. “I am the anvil. Strause is the hammer. With his forces and the [Hunters] harrying it, he can push it back into me, then our forces can take to rapidly clearing the city more effectively with the main street open, Annabeth.”
She shook her head, and I winced at his calm. I remembered Strause Shrieking as if he were being tortured in the square, and I tried to imagine him standing, nonetheless, taking his forces and pushing back against a monster, or god forbid, the monster I thought was haunting the street.
“The city burns, and you talk formally. Your plan won't work. Strause was encircled; he had enough to hold against a handful of undead, but his numbers were limited. Oh, and he’s hurt, not that you seem to mind all that much.”
“He was attacked?” Clause asked, “Strause got hurt? I’m sure he’s fine, though the troops… I’ll need to change my plan.”
Anna looked apoplectic; she looked like she wanted to hit him over the head; holding herself back from having a fit, she muttered, “Our. Little. Brother.” Each word was punctuated with a hiss so low that it was hard to hear the passive noise of others and the distant noise of mass destruction.
“Enough, stop being hysterical; if he’s wounded, he would seek help if he needed it. Go. This is no place for you, especially not if you're going to let your emotions rule you. You have something to see to, and I have something to do, and there’s no place for nagging,” he told her flatly.
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We looked at Clause, and then one another, and the world needed no words for us to share the conversation we had in that one stare. Her brother was being a dumb ass; he was thinking with his dick and felt like he needed to show off for some reason.
His insult aside, Anna obviously had something of a weak spot for her brother, for what reason beyond blood, I couldn’t guess. I was all for it; let him get slammed around, getting burnt while touching the stove to instill a sense of not being an idiot.
“I’ll be coming back for you,” she told Clause offhandedly, “Do survive your idiocy so your wife can nurse you back to health,” she told him.
There was a pause as a very, very hard-to-notice look of confusion was in his eyes.
“I- What? I don’t-” he tried to get out only.
“And you never will,” she chastised, scoring a point against her idiot brother.
I nodded to her; it was a good score, and she appreciated that I appreciated it.
I shrugged, “Then we go to put out the fire, I guess,” I told her, “I suppose we could always get those guards; they’re like level 70; they could take a monster easily.”
“No, we can’t,” they said at the same time, “I refuse; they will guard no further than the gate,” met me in a wall of veto from both of them.
I blinked at them, looking back and forth. I looked at Anna with the, ‘Why not,’ to which she just shook her head.
“I don’t need their help to fight a measly monster. They will continue to guard as they are supposed to, inside the wall.” Clause told me.
I ignored him because his sister was worth my time and told her, “I’m more use out here than helping you; I’ll come out and make sure he lives,” I told her.
“I do not appreciate-” He started.
“I suppose… But only after I get it over with can I use your reserve if you have any left ?” she asked me, speaking over him.
“As the future-” he tried again.
“Sure, I’ll-”
“I will not let you help me, I don’t need the help of a random untrained woman with a shovel,” he spoke over me.
“And I won’t. I’ll let you lose your limbs and be a man and all that; I know how you lot get. I’ll just make sure you don’t die to the monster. Especially if it’s the one I fought before, I want a rematch; you would think impaling its skull to sternum would kill something, but it just shrugged it off.”
Anna looked at me and pointed, asking, “Is that what happened to my shovel?”
“Yes,” I told her, “But I brought back a bonus shovel. I apologize for the loss of the tool, I’ll pay you back in spades.”
All of us looked at me, though for me it was mostly at my shoes because I couldn’t bear to meet her eyes. I didn’t even mean to make a joke, but I was too far gone to save it, so I didn’t.
“Why was I not told about this? There was a monster this side of the river? I should be told immediately, why was I not informed?” Clause asked, blessedly breaking the tension.
“Probably because you live in a mansion with lethal guardians.” I informed Strause, “its probably going through the chain of command. Come on Anna, us emotional women folk are unwanted despite our recent achievements, let’s go save the city.”
Clause stopped, taking me in, before turning and simply gesturing, his men moving to him, filing through our looser troops.
Anna turned to the old man, who watched impassively and asked him, “Who do you think is best to guard this junction? Clause will need everyone he can get, so we’ll hold this intersection.”
He grunted, pointed at the ground, and said, “[Guard] this intersection,” before nodding as a handful of guards naturally started moving.
“Well… That was easy,” I said.
He let out a grunt before simply saying, “Lady mage, it's half a degree hotter.”
We jumped to it, spurred by the words, we perked up and started moving, urging the guards forth with a “[March].”
We turned and got to it, quickly making our way down the road as it curved around the wall, quickly spotting the gate and the pile of bodies in front of it.
There were knives, arrows, and three gremlin bodies bisected, with a suspicious greatsword embedded in a wall behind them, standing at attention, the Mynes family guards with their fancy armour and weapons. Neither was the one guard I knew, but the weapon usage did have an undeniable similarity to the master of weapons.
Everything was a stick, throw stick, spiny stick, really big sharp stick… All the same.
If this was him, it would have given him some credence. Even if it was ridiculous at the moment, it obviously did something for him, considering he got to the point where the big sword in the wall that looked like it weighed more than me, like a giant axe was hucked in from the gate. And it was from the gate, non of them had a normal wound, all of them ranged.
They lined up side by side at the focal point of a macabre semi-circle focused where the two guards, more than enough to deal with the monster, let alone some gremlins, on their own.
Anna waltzed on up with the rest of us at her back and got a polite, “Lady Mynes,” and was let in.
We were not.
“Halt, only nobility may enter at the current time,” one of them said.
Anna made to argue, but I just sighed, telling her, “I can’t push past them unless you want to carry my body around with you. I’ll go watch over your brother… I don’t suppose either of you want to go help Clause?”
“No, he can handle himself,” they said in unison, though they sounded more like they thought it was a chore.
She huffed, but I gave her the best smile that I could, which made it less citrus, more apple, and to try and take a bit more out, I fell behind the other guards and blew her a lighthearted kiss, which she got with a light blush and waved me off.
And so we departed, her sweet and momentarily sour, and me to her idiotic brother; I left both her and the guards behind in the care of the old archer.
***
I left Saphine behind, my cheeks flushing in what I could only describe as silliness. It was a little blown kiss, but god, she knew how to make me smile, and she had weaponized it to make me less tart at the stupid command Clause had no doubt given them.
The guard rarely, if ever, left the compound, only seeing outside when they were off duty, truly off duty. They were trained on decades of civil conflict and monster suppression. It was in their nature to enjoy fighting, but seeing level 70s let loose around level 20s? It was like watching two blurry mountains slam into one another.
I walked down the path to my ancestral home alone, with a total lack of any friendly faces. The inner area was nearly deserted as always, only a select few manors had anyone home at all.
It was a short jaunt to the center point of the city, down the road and over to the inner wall and to the place where I had grown up. The courtyard was a swarm of activity, the rest of the guards ready to spread out from it if the walls got attacked, all along the wall there were lookouts. It was kind of funny.
The only people they were protecting were the staff and mother; the rest of us were all out. It was like having a personal guard of 30 level 70’s. It was the kind of guard a [Duke] might have. Even the emperor himself only had 100 guards above that, and they guarded a city-sized palace.
I looked up and found the roof, which would be the best place to cast it, open to the elements and high up.
I made my way inside the hall empty, and the lamps wound down for the night. I made my way up the main stairs and bumped into the lady of the house. I bumped into her literally, neither of us watching where we were going, and as I did, I stepped back from her.
She took me in before I even realized who it was and moved with me, pulling me into an awkward hug. It was awkward for me anyway.
“Oh, thank goodness, you’re alright,” were words I never thought my mother would say about me.
“Mother, I’m in the middle of something,” I told her, trying to get out of the hug only for my mother to hold me tighter.
To appease her and end the hug as quickly as possible, I gave her a gentle pat on the back while she talked mostly to herself.
Who was this woman? Because she was not the woman I knew. My mother would not be relieved when I came home; she would not hug me and be worried for me.
She was a stranger.
Placing my hands on her shoulders, I pulled myself back, only to catch tears in her eyes.
“Mother, I need to do something up on the roof. I understand you're worried, but I need to-”
“I know, I know you’re here to help… I’m just glad you’re alright too,” she told me.
Blissfully, she loosened her grip and let me pull myself back; my staff held out awkwardly until she let go, her calm slowly returning while she took out a handkerchief and whipped her eyes.
“I’ll come with you to the roof. I am a [Mage] now, and while I don’t know much about magic, I might be able to help you out,” Mother suggested, another departure from her much more dictatorial decisions.
“I would suggest, if you do, you bring a coat or something for the rain.”