Lichos did his best not to stand tall as he followed behind the dula, knowing full well how much of a giveaway his soldier’s gait could be were the wrong eyes to behold it.

It was a difficult task. One that demanded unerring attention on his part, punctuated by constant slumps and stiffens as he absently slipped back into old habits.

At this rate I may as well not bother. He thought to himself, irritated by his own futile efforts. By Lichos’ reckoning, a man trying particularly hard not to look a soldier would only draw more suspicion.

“Is it much farther?” He asked, painfully aware he’d repeated the question twice already. If Pyrhic was irked by it, she gave no hint that he could see.

“We have only a half mile more, by my estimate.” The woman answered, still speaking with the measured, clipped and carefully accented tones that seemed any officer’s inheritance. Minus, Lichos noted, the casual anger and authority.

Only half a mile, she says. He mused. Trying to reassure me I suppose. She thinks I’m getting sick of walking.

The notion made him grin as he considered it. They’d been moving by foot for purposes of secrecy, traversing no less than a half league with endless, trudging steps to ensure the carriage responsible for taking them most of the way would betray nothing.

Half a league was no distance at all. Lichos had never met a Wrathman in his life who’d struggle to march even ten times so far.

He regretted letting his thoughts stray almost instantly. Wrath was a pisstap of death and war, yet so too was it home. Lichos’ friends were there still, holding lines and forts in his absence. Equipped with the very same nylon armour that Kaiosyni had insisted would be too recogniseable for his mission.

He scratched at the hastily acquired civilian clothing adorning him, still unused to its fit. Still hateful of the nakedness it left him with.

Marching into a potential fight without armour. Did Kaiosyni use her magic to drive me mad?

Lichos was cursed with his own thoughts for little longer, their destination soon coming into sight.

A building of two stories, wide and squat, made from worn wood and shoddily placed cobbles. Windows unshuttered for the day, door unwatched, noise from within audible even from fifty yards.

It looked entirely unassuming to him, no different from a hundred other pubs he’d drunk hours away in on leave or rests between marches.

Lichos supposed that was very much the point.

“Do you remember what I told you?” The dula asked him, not looking back as she headed for the structure.

“You told me lots of things.”

“And do you remember all of them?”

He hesitated only a moment before answering.

“Yes.”

It seemed answer enough for the woman, quickening her pace. Lichos lengthened his own stride until he followed barely half a yard behind, fingers moving absently to the rifle slung over his shoulder.

The streets around them were less crowded than others they’d moved through, but it was still as undeniable a slum as he’d ever seen. That the building they neared was in such good condition spoke volumes of its inhabitants.

Lichos felt the weight of the arcstock crystals held in his pocket, the snuff box in another. It was as much reassurement as he could hope for.

Pyrhic pushed through the door, sound raising as it opened. She stepped inside undeterred.

Drink and tobacco coloured the air’s stench, as much of it stale as fresh. Smoke wafted thinly in all parts of the interior, floorboards wetted and stained where many a spill had gone uncleaned.

There was a compression to the place that only grew as fifty eyes turned to their entrance, faces pinched and unfriendly. Suspicious and hostile. Lichos fought the urge to draw his gun.

As if she didn’t even notice them the dula continued on her way through. Weaving between tables, carefully not meeting any of the many glares fired at her. Gliding towards a bar at the back of the room.

She leaned against the grimy counter, eying the giant of a man stood behind it and speaking with somewhat of a lower tone than normal. Lichos quickly realised he understood nothing of the conversation.

Of course, Paradisan.

The language barrier only worsened Lichos’ fear, and he found his thoughts turning sharp and paranoid. Urging him to retreat, find a defensible corner of the room and prepare a firing line- or as near to one as he could manage by himself.

He checked the impulse, focused himself through breath and thought. Occupied his mind by studying the faces and movement of those around him, so that he might substitute the information for their words.

It helped little. All were tense, nervous and well accustomed to violence. Lichos managed nothing but to remind himself of the danger he stood surrounded by.

A sharpening of Pyrhic’s voice drew his eyes back to her conversation. The large man sneered at her as he spoke, appearing entirely unimpressed with whatever she said, even casting a baleful glare at Lichos himself. The growing tightness of the dula’s voice confirmed their plan’s hitch.

A powerful Manamis monomage. He thought, distracting himself again. Undisclosed appearance, but with a widespread reputation and power enough to earn a fortune every month.

Lichos suddenly found Pyrhic’s conversation less interesting by far, turning back to assess the building’s occupants once more. Still thinking, still searching absently.

He’ll know someone’s coming for him, surely. Manamicists are suspect number two for anything, and he’d be hidden away with just that in mind.

The more Lichos thought, the more confident he grew of what he sought. Scanning the room carefully, he took note of the men and women who seemed nervous and subdued.

Sweat, heavy breathing, gulps and fidgeting were the markers he scrutinised them for, and he soon found no small number bunched together on a table near the far corner. Half a dozen people sat around it, all staring at the dula with a poorly hidden concentration.

He smiled to himself at the sight. Lichos had been sergeant long enough to recognise a conspiratorial squad when he saw one.

Lichos averted his gaze from the group, forcing his eyes ahead and his body still in the practiced, statuesque manner that had served him so well in Unix. Waiting until Pyrhic’s conversation drew to a close.

The woman moved to walk past him in a huff, failure clear from her demeanour alone. Lichos stopped her with as subtle a hand as he could manage.

“Don’t look now.” He murmured, leaning in close, “But I think I might know who we’re here for.”

The woman froze.

“Which direction are they sat in?” She asked.

He answered, studying her as she studied them. After a few moments of silent, subtle contemplation, Pyrhic seemed to ease up fractionally.

“I think you’re right.” She breathed. “Well done.”

The dula was walking before Lichos knew it, making a beeline for the table. Marching towards it with a fearlessness that was entirely inappropriate in the face of any mystic, let alone a Manamicist.

He hurried after her, already regretting his observation. Suddenly finding the urge to draw his weapon twice as strong.

Pyrhic demanded something of them in Paradisan as Lichos arrived, unflinching in her glare.

Faces grew tense at the question, bodies coiled and tight like compressed springs. Lichos found himself studying each of the five individuals about the table for any sign of imminent violence.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

One of the men grunted something in a voice rough and coarse as dried sand, speaking the same tongue as the others. It drove Lichos to madness that he couldn’t understand what was being said, fury deepening at the harsh, dangerous glint in the drunkard’s eye.

He was sure a threat had just passed those thin, chipped lips. Yet still it was lost on him.

Again Pyrhic spoke, still in Unixian. Still aggressive and direct.

Eyes hardened across the table. Enough that Lichos was suddenly taking the men’s measure, gauging the threat they might pose.

Two were big, two average, one small. All but one had the bulging forearms of a dock worker, swollen with muscle. None were without a leathery epidermis, pale and light like seemingly all Unixians, and all had shortly cut hair of brown and blonde.

Peering through his mind’s eye, Lichos cast the world into the dull glow of ambient magic. He found their target revealed with an unmistakable incandescence. Only the scrawniest of the men had the aura of a mystic.

He cleared his throat, telling Pyrhic what he’d seen and watching as the woman rounded back on the group with a triumphant look.

They spoke for moments more before her tongue wove Taikan again.

“None of them are talking.” She growled. “Including the mystic. Can you motivate them?”

“Beat them up?” Lichos asked, certain he’d caught her meaning, checking just in case. The woman’s eyes widened.

“What? No! Intimidate him. He’s a mystic.”

It took a moment more for Lichos to realise what she meant, his face colouring as he did.

“Right. Sorry.” He muttered, drawing his focus inwards and concentrating.

Waiting as it always did was the well of untouchable power in his core Stagnant, lifeless and soulless, given animacy only by his thoughts and providing no resistance as he drew it to the forefront of his mind.

The nihil coiled outwards like the sluggish hand of a slumbering giant, rolling through the space between Lichos and the mystic. Invisible, beyond sensation or detection by all but himself. Lighter than air and thicker than oil.

He could see the very moment it enveloped his target, the mystic’s widening eyes making it impossible to miss. His face paled in an instant, muscles bunching and jumping beneath his skin and eyes bulging as if they might flee his skull.

Lichos had to concentrate even more to keep himself from grinning at the sight. In his entire life, few things had ever brought so much satisfaction as the sight of a mystic touched by nihil.

Pyrhic spoke with a haste that belied her eagerness, pouncing on the man’s weakness and pressing her attack. She was talking for only a minute more before the conversation ended, her face masked with victory as she turned to the door.

Drawing the nihil back into himself, not missing the gasp of relief from its target, Lichos followed her. Eyes and ears kept out for trouble as he did.

None came, yet he still failed to relax until they were a hundred paces from the building.

It was never unwise for a pariah to cock his ears after making such a public show of what they were.

“That went well.” He noted, finding silence a formidable ally to his discontent. The dula didn’t turn to him or answer, simply continued walking.

“I think it went well at least.” Lichos continued, suddenly reminded of the fact that he’d recognised not a word. “You seemed quite pleased as you left. So it went well, yes?”

Irritation touching her face, the woman glanced at him and nodded sharply.

“Reasonably so.” She answered. “We know now where Marxcus Frois is residing, roughly at least. It shouldn’t be too much of a task to find him from here.”

“Know where he is? I thought you just spoke to him in there.”

Pyrhic bristled.

“As it turns out, no. That was just one of the mystics he’s trained over the years. Frois himself is in hiding and has been for months now. Didn’t you sense the weakness of the one we interrogated?”

He had sensed it. Lichos had dismissed the clue, assumed Pyrhic knew something he didn’t. His mistake turned to embarrassment.

Pit, why couldn’t they just have told me to shoot something?

“Where’s he hiding then?” He asked, eager for the topic to change.

“The sewers.”

Lichos grinned.

“Really? A mystic hiding in shit. That’d be a sight to see.”

“Apparently he’s angered no small number of gangers, drawing the ire of every single group in Udrebam. I’d be impressed by the feat, were it not so idiotic.”

Still smirking at the idea of finding one of the magic-blessed covered with waste, Lichos merely shrugged.

“Mystics are arseholes.” He mused. “There are probably bigger examples than him.”

He’d hoped to draw a smirk from the woman, perhaps quickly hidden by her sense of loyalty and politeness. Instead her eyes were hard as they rested on him, gaze studious.

“You really hate them, don’t you?” She asked.

“Hate who?” Lichos answered, feigning innocence.

“Mystics. Of any class or kind, as far as I can tell. You had no small amount of distaste for the one back in that pub, and I daresay his income is lower than most of your inept officers.”

Lichos turned away from her, finding himself in no mood to meet her battering-ram glare.

“That seems to me like it’s none of your concern.” He replied, keeping his voice level. Employing the very same tone of passive defiance he’d typically reserve for those equipped with horse and blade.

The woman was undeterred.

“I disagree.” She answered, voice suddenly as cold as Lichos’. Colder. “I am Lavastro Kaiosyni’s dula, serving the household of the Megala Progenus himself. You, temporarily at the very least, have just as direct a role in working towards Kaiosyni’s goals as I do. If you have a bias against mystics then it is extremely relevant.”

He found it impossible to argue with the woman, however much he wanted to. Lichos shrugged.

“I don’t have a bias.” He muttered. “I’ve just learned from experience, like most others have. Mystics are born with a silver spoon up their arse and the power to take whatever they want at their fingertips, that alone would make most people bastards.”

“That seems a strange complaint.” The dula noted. “Coming from one with no small amount of power himself.”

Lichos took a moment to realise what she was saying, laughing out loud when he did.

“I’m a magiphage. A pariah.” He snapped. “That’s not the same thing, it’s not even comparable.”

“Isn’t it?” The woman pressed. “Even were you average, you’d be a match for most mystics. Pit, an average magiphage could kill most mystics with ease in the right circumstances. And you’re far from an unremarkable example.”

Lichos’ temper flared at her words. They betrayed no logical mind to him, only a blissful lack of experience.

“And I’m hated where mystics are loved.” He hissed. “Executed by law in half of this continent and every part of another.”

“If you wish to convince me that par- magiphagi are treated unjustly, you may save your breath. It’s long since been clear to me. However mystics are not the inherently excessive fobs you seem to think, either.”

For a moment Lichos considered pressing the matter further, arguments readying in his mind like a row of primed muskets. He thought better of it, realised nothing could come of the discussion no matter how well he performed. Bit his tongue and sighed.

“I’ll cause no problems, that’s all you need to know.”

“How can I be sure?” The woman asked.

“Because I’m a Wrathman. Following orders and not antagonising superiors is something I’ve spent my entire life practicing.”

Despite himself, Lichos glanced at the dula. Saw consideration on her face before she turned away. After a moment, she nodded.

“Very well then. That’s good enough for me.”

They walked in silence for a dozen paces more before Lichos found himself urged to speak. A question burning irresistibly.

“Why are you so loyal to Kaiosyni?” He asked.

Pyrhic eyed him cautiously.

“I’m not trying to start another argument.” He added hurriedly. “I’m just… curious.”

“I’m loyal to my katoch because she is the future of Taiklos.” Pyrhic said, adopting an orator’s voice. “She is compassionate, intelligent and driven by a greater urge than any other I’ve met to better the world. If and when she truly succeeds the Megala Progenus, I have no doubt she’ll bring the Taikan Empire to an unprecedented age of wonder.”

Lichos stared at her.

“That sounds right out of a bloody script.” He noted.

The dula surprised him with the ghost of a smile.

“I suppose it does. It is, however, the truth. I’ve seen all the traits I admire her for demonstrated time and time again.”

She trailed off, apparently struggling with her next words.

“Her kindness above all. I became koros Kaiosyni’s dula when she took me into her household from another. One less… righteous.”

The woman’s shiver conveyed everything Lichos cared to know.

“If it seems a typical, uninspired answer then I can only apologise for following too perfect a ruler.”

He nodded, moving his eyes to the front and continuing the walk in silence. Disquietment and confusion sitting heavy in his gut.

Lichos replayed what the dula had said to him in his mind. Gnawed on her words. They struck no more chords within him, however he tried.

He knew plenty of loyalty, having given and earned it himself in the fire of battle, but it had never occurred to him that any dula could hold the same thoughts. That any person could fit any feeling but animosity within their heart for one who owned them like an animal. It seemed wrong to him, perverse. Almost incestuous.

The impression only deepened the more he trudged on.

As the road shortened underfoot, and the day aged in the skies above, he soon found himself distracted by another matter entirely. Boots scraping on ground out of sight, the rattling of steel as shaky fists clutched it. Breaths growing heavy with anticipation.

His body recognised the noises before his mind did, for Lichos’ gun was already drawn and bayoneted by the time his mouth worked.

“Get behind me.” He muttered to Pyrhic. “Get behind me, and stay behind me. We’re about to be-”

The attack interrupted his voice, beginning with a desperate roar that bled into thundering footfalls. Five men in all, charging from the mouth of an alley as if they thought to cut gold from his belly.