[40th Year of Foresai, Upper Fire Month, Day 16]

Shit, what timing do I set this too?

Evileye quickly shifted to her spellbook, opening it and fanning through its pages. She was on all fours in front of a stout and fiendishly complex device, no larger than one of her handspans, itself at the center of one of the five outlying circles. She overshot the page, her eyes snagging on the chart she was looking for. Flipping back swiftly, she opened it to reveal a large table that had been pasted into the book. It spanned the breadth of two pages, each entry crammed with numbers and arcane symbology. She ran her fingers down one of the columns, searching for the matching output.

‘Two mark one’, ‘two mark two’, ‘three mark…’ ‘four mark four’... ah, here. I’ll set the dynamo to ‘five mark five’. I want higher throughput, but a timing of ‘five mark six’ just has too great an amount of volatility.

She looked up, reaching and tensioning a small dial on the machine. She rotated it into place, counting the clicks it made as she did so, then stopped. Suddenly, she torqued it further, far overwinding it.

No, I can run this supersaturated and maintain a stable output. ‘Eight mark seven’ would work much better, I’ll do that.

“Shorty, you ready?”

“Almost.”

With one last click, Evileye was satisfied and shuttered the panel the controls were laid in. She got to her knees, then righted.

That’s everything. The circles, words, and symbols are drawn. Timers, coordinator, direction finders all in place. The channels are correct, every artifice to the right settings. I can’t believe this is all it takes to breach into the magics of the seventh tier. I’m almost starting to think I could try to perform this non-synthetically, at least on the right day - no, not yet; but if this works? I think I can get there. Yes, this is going to work.

“Are we ready now?”

“Yes. This isn’t as close to the edge as I thought it would be.”

“Good. I wasn’t looking to shred myself against the manatic expanse.”

“Well said Boss.”

“Alright, everyone get in place.”

At Evileye’s instruction, the other four members of the Blue Roses walked into the circle. Evileye backed away from the chronometer, halting herself once she reached the center of the primary ring.

What direction does the vault face, east? No, it's north.

Evileye turned to her left, facing northward.

“This direction.”

The others arrayed themselves around Evileye, Lakyus in front, Gagaran behind, Tia and Tina to left and right, all of them turned outward. This formation was one Lakyus had developed in one of her off-days, and had quickly become a standard tactic for their teleport assaults. There were more aggressive postures they could have taken, but those required foreknowledge of the point of attack, and Evileye had no mana to waste on spells of remote viewing. Lakyus unfurled her blades from her back, four of the six sliding faced broadside out in the gaps between her and her comrades, the remaining two sliding into the space above Evileye’s head. Lakyus turned and handed Evileye a single platinum coin, one that had been given to them by Renner as payment less than a month prior, and that had lied in a coffer deep in Valencia until that time. Imbued in it was a sense of its previous location, and when consumed as part of the cast, would give a frighteningly accurate reckoning to the palace's hold.

This makes the weirding rods redundant, but I’m not going to part myself of any advantage here. The chance of mishap is too high.

Lakyus returned to her prior orientation, casting her gaze around at the group. Evileye was gripped with an overwhelming hesitation, her dead heart giving a second beat.

Am I actually going to try this? Am I insane?

“Evileye, are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“Tia?”

“Yes, Fiendish Leader.”

“Gagaran?”

“Yes Boss.”

“Tina?”

“Yes, Evil Boss.”

“Evileye, begin.”

I must be mad.

“Starting the cast, on my mark. Ten.”

Evileye began to pour mana into the circle, her arms tingling as she released power, serving as an overflowing font of magic.

“Nine.”

The inscriptions on the ground started to bathe the room in false-colors, a sickly cyan shining from the ground in the innermost ring. They served as conduits, feeding energy to each word and rendering them into the material.

“Eight.”

The median rings began to glow an equal color, their intensity wavering in nauseating fashion. The ebbs and flows increased in frequency until flickering with unbound speed, all motion seemingly happening in stutter step.

“Seven.”

The outermost portion of the primary circle lit up, its length long enough for Evileye to actually spot the path of arcane shockwaves and feedbacks along its length. Arcanodynamic oscillations began to resonate along its length, the colors kaleidoscope across the ceiling.

“Six.”

The secondary rings were touched by the iridan luminescence, and the devices that sat in their centers suddenly burst into motion. The space was filled with the sounds of machinery clacking, ticking, and scraping against itself.

“Five.”

The salts ignited. Angry reds, blues, and yellows painted the shadows of the Blue Roses on the walls surrounding them, forms overlapping and warping in the light of the flame. The rotations of each circle followed in turn, the inequity in brightness suddenly breaking into a clockwise spiral.

“Four.”

The two weirding rods began to levitate and rotate in place, one snapping in the direction of the capital, the other revving wildly. Its end suddenly shot upward, pointing straight up, spinning so fast as to cause the air to hum.

“Three.”

The feedbacks along the rings began to intensify, bursts of power shearing against the arcane words, shearing sparks of pure mana into the air. The gaps between the ticking of the chronometers grew closer together, until they synchronized entirely.

“Two.”

Evileye’s hands were numb, the vibrations of the spell of such a quick pace that her fingers began to blur. The salts heated to frightening temperatures, their incandescence losing color signature and approaching a blinding white.

“One.”

The inscriptions peeled off the ground, the substances they had been written completely consumed, leaving only pure mana aligned in the shape of their matrices. The sparks became blinding bright, no longer residues torn from the ring but arcane excitations of extreme heat. The humming in the space reached a fever pitch, the sounds of every device melding into a unified morass of enthralling noise.

“Mark.”

The world tore, the space around them shredding into indistinguishable colors before being wiped away as if they never existed. Opalescent unlight shone through their bodies, flooding their eyes. A roar unlike any had ever heard filled them to the core of their beings. A shell of abjurant magic broke itself from the arcane immaterium, a pulse of red light enveloping them. The painful radiance of the space around them lessened in its intensity, their faces framed by an almost pure vermillion. The space around them suddenly aligned into rigorous geometric patterns, a hard lattice of unknown make extending in all directions. A scraping noise, like the sound of brittle rock being abratted by steel-wool, scuffed the ears of Blue Roses. The matrix shattered, and the Blue Roses crashed back into the material world.

Shit! Feedback!

The course of the mana flow through Evileye suddenly reversed, shooting through the long since deceased tissues of her body. The circuits of her body blew, unconsumed energies leaving havoc in their wakes as her insides contorted. Dozens of unspent words of power seared onto the inside walls of her veins, the ichor of her necrotic blood flash-boiling as it quenched them. She was immolated in arcane flame, blue jets shooting through the slits of her mask and the base of her robe. The dead flesh of her hands burnt down to the bone, and then scorched that too. She collapsed, having sustained wounds that would have instantly killed any mortal.

The travel time did not exceed two seconds, but the Blue Roses had arrived in the capital. They were in a cramped room, one of the vaults in the deepest and most-safeguarded parts of Valencia. A pitch-like bile seeped from Evileye’s body, little mounds of it occasionally forming into humps as magic letters sublimated back into the æther, sending scattershot motes of the curdled blood of a cadaver into the air. Lakyus whipped around to look at Evileye, and upon seeing her companion waylaid, shouted in a desperate tone.

“Evileye!”

She tried to respond, but her vocal cords had incinerated, the inside of her throat a spillway for the release of agitated magic. She could produce no more than a faint whisper. Instead of speaking, she cast a message spell. It burned to do so, bursting more of the few remaining intact membranes of her body, but it was the only way she could think to communicate.

“Go. My body will heal itself. Save someone for me to feed on.”

“Got it. Everyone, let's move.”

Her comrades trode carefully around her body, taking care to avoid any of her spilled vitality. Some had flowed into the grooves cut into the stone below by the spell, flowing along channels burnt by the projected shadow of its diad. It was a poor rendering of the rings and words she had inscribed back in the keep, her gaze floating along its length lightly and without any purpose. She was absurdly tired, more so than she had been in over a century.

I showed that youngster… “Monster of the east,” what a joke… Out of any monster in this world, I’m the greatest caster of the age.

With a sense of satisfaction, Evileye stopped treading the waters of awareness, letting the thread of her consciousness snip.

—

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‘Save someone for me to feed on’? We’re taking prisoners regardless. She must need it. Between that, and this teleportation gambit, you’ve shared so much of yourself today. Gods, that was terrifying.

Tia quickly unsheathed one of her blood-leaching blades, the qualia of the leather wrap providing her a sense of comfort and stability. Lakyus returned the blades to her side, cracking her knuckles as she stepped out of the burnt afterimage of the circle. Gagaran fell in behind, Tia standing flank with her sister and tailing her in turn. The room was stout, coffers and chests filling the space, a comparatively large pile of gold bars stacked in a pyramid shuffled off to one side of the room. The platinum coin had melted and vaporized in the process of the warp, guiding them nearly onto a pile of its kin for which it had resided for months prior.

The door should be right around this corner.

They emerged from one of the smaller cell-like rooms of the vault into the main channel of the gaol. Tia spotted the door, crafted from a solid steel nearly a finger length thick.

Lucky they didn’t line this place with copper, or worse, lead. I don’t know what we would have done.

With two swift strokes of Kilineiram along opposite diagonals, Lakyus projected a cross of cursed shade and rent the door. Leveling it, she loosed third burst of anathematic power, blowing the wreckage off its hinges and clearing the way entirely. Shouting came from the other side, and the team entered into the space. There was a teller and four guards, watching mouths agape as a set of four fully armed and dour looking women emerged from their vault. The room was lined with scales and transaction benches, a loud rattling as several coins were spilled in shock by one of their operators. Lakyus swiftly distinguished the most senior of the men present, a forty-something man in filigreed full-plate, turning her head to speak to him as she and her companions strode through the foyer to the bank.

“Raise the alarm, the King-”

A woman’s scream cut Lakyus off, twisting her head to divine its source. Tia burst into the corridor, finding a noblewoman in terror at the sight of two dead palace bondsmen slumped against the opposite wall. Blood seeped from the caps of their plate, the wounds on their neck thin slivers.

“Two knights.”

“Shit! It’s started.”

Tia sheathed her blade and crouched down to evaluate the bodies. Her eyes poured over the slits that freed them from the world, pressing her fingers lightly into what skin had remained unfouled. She clicked her tongue upon registering the heat of the body.

Lukewarm. Means this can’t have happened less than five minutes ago. Is everyone here blind? How was that woman the first to scream? This is bad. Thrusts to the neck, thin blades. Would be delicate weapons, but in any case, the cuts are clean. Experienced hands did this. Ah; that fluid there isn’t just blood, poison mixed too. Either overkill, or caution. Smart enough not to be prideful.

Tia reached behind her and signed with her left hand, rapidly communicating the most important details to her twin.

‘Time.’ ‘Five.’ ‘Thin.’ ‘Poison.’ ‘Danger.’ ‘Enemy.’

Slurring the motion between the first and last two hand signals, she indicated their connection. Her eyes caught on the unusual smoothness of the wound's edge, passing one final detail to her sister.

‘Enchant.’

Lakyus turned to the seniormost man present, addressing him without any pretense of title.

“You! Where is his Majesty and the Warrior-Captain?”

“I-in his quarters I think-”

“Everyone, third floor. Tia and I will take the south stair-”

“But Captain Gazef left just now. There was some sort of disturbance in the city, something about a pyromancer. Our alert level was raised.

“Do you know where?”

“One of the warren districts, I think it was Lainsbur- No it was Foresain!”

A rogue pyromancer? Is it that Six Arms undead? If so, I imagine Gazef’s already engaged the entire team. Shit, this is getting complicated. We’re down Evileye too.

“Change of plan. Tia, you go up the south stair alone, circle through the side corridors on the second floor. Gagaran, with me to the third. We’re going after the king directly. Tina, find someone who knows what the fuck is going on with Gazef and see if you can’t find him. If you do, get him back here now.”

Tia had committed the palace floor plan to memory, spending a few hours creating practice sketches of it blindfolded, then contrasting that with actual documents provided to them by Renner. She had already stalked portions of it during Lakyus’s visits, slipping past patrols or finding increasingly contrived hiding spaces; this less out of vigilance, moreso boredom. If no one stood in the way, she could likely find her way to any corner of the palace in total darkness. Satisfied with her investigation, she stood and looked down the hallway to her left flank.

Based on their facing, their killers likely came from this direction. Had to be multiple, the knights died too close together to be otherwise.

“Boss, what about the Pri-”

“We’ll grab ‘our Friend in the Tower’ after we save the King. He’ll have ‘his Knight’ with him.”

Renner had resisted that code name, stating that it was too on-the-nose. The team had reminded her that her mind snagged on patterns no one else would notice, and such divinations by the enemy would be doubly unlikely through the course of an operation, but the Princess has insisted on at least swapping gender. The name for Climb was something Gagaran had come up with, and after much teasing from the warrioress, a blushing Renner relented. Tia had found it cute at the time, the Princess’s clear affection for her guard seeming ever so innocent. The events of tonight soured the memory for her.

“Move.”

Lakyus and Gagaran turned rightward from the door, Tia and Tina running left in twain. This was only for a short distance, before her sister broke away at a junction and dove out an open window onto the palace lawn. Tia near the edge of the hall, wanting to avoid the loose carpets that ran its length in this part of Valencia. She rounded a corner at speed, nearly colliding with a pair of sharply dressed men, both of which were clearly stumbling, intoxicated.

Drunkards here?

She bolted past them in the span of a second, but cast her gaze to look back at them as she ran. They tried to follow her in their vision, but they were overly dazed and insufficiently inclined to do more than halfheartedly attempt to pivot. She was able to catch half of both their faces.

They aren’t palace regulars I think. At least I don’t remember them if I’ve seen them.

She turned her head back forward, the disquieting sense of knowledge just out of grasp sitting back of mind. The south stair to the second floor, although smaller than the main staircase, still possessed a grandeur that outshone most others constructed in the age of men. It was in the shape of a T, an intermediate landing at its cross, above which the second floor cut adjacent. Bursting into the large foyer which it was constructed in, Tia found a much larger crowd of people than she would have expected after dark, - over a dozen - all of which were dressed in finery. Her eyes went wide in remembrance.

A general council was called! Lakyus received that invite a few days ago, a request to make travel arrangements. That’s tonight!? It must be. Shit! That complicates things much more.

The sight in front of her was stranger still; the lot of them were just as lushed as the men she had just blown past. The space was filled with debaucheries and embarrassments, men completely afield of their senses. Some gambled; some harassed the maids; some were haranguing each other in slurred and disjoint speech. The worst display of lavasiousness was a nobleman half pitched over the banister of the second floor, struggling in a battle to keep his stomach. Tia’s eyelid twitched.

No one is doing a thing. There was a double murder two halls down! Is this place mad?!

Moving through the space, Tia attracted a significant amount of attention. Many nobles watched her with detached curiosity, as if she was a performer deep in some act. As she continued to dash through the space, she enthralled more of the crowd. The faces of a smattering of those still possessing of their wisdom began to change in concern. A foul smoke curled up from an older man’s pipe, the inklike tint of the smoke contrasting against the bright gray of his hair, the unmistakable acidic tinge of a richly refined Laira. The sight crushed Tia’s soul.

We need to win this war, and quickly. I should warn them. ‘After we rematerialize, avoid panicking any non-combatants. Mention a threat, or death at most, but no talk of an assassination attempt against the King.’

“Everyone, get to your house guards! There’s been a murder!”

I hope that works, Lakyus.

Screams and shouts followed, even the most gregarious of the still able-minded being pulled from their dins of alcohol inside their minds. The man slung over the banister lost his fight against his stomach, spilling its contents onto the carpet below. Tia ignored anything said, extending her left arm and catching the lowest banner at pace, using it to rapidly shift her momentum. Using it to push herself up, she released and fully cleared the steps to the first landing, halfway between the first and second stories. Banking counterclockwise with a swift kick off of the railing opposite her, she ascended up the left branch, although at less speed than she would desire. A knight at the second floor landing, in unusually bare full plate for such a night, suddenly drew his blade with a deadly gaze at Tia.

Assassin. Typical disguise, but having the money to pull that off is a different thing. Armor like that isn’t cheap.

He rushed to the edge of the second landing, pirouetting his sword into a defensive position. Tia, still flanking the wall, ran up its length and vaulted fully to the height of the second floor. Instead of landing on it, she caught and torqued herself, landing feet down on the railing that framed the balcony. Dashing along its length, she lept again, drawing her knife mid-air. The man slashed at her in a desperate defense, but the engagement had slipped entirely from his favor.

Correct move against most.

Tia jinked, twisting her body and avoiding his blade by less than a finger length. She closed the distance completely, plunging her blade through his throat, doing so off center to sever as many veins as possible. Bracing her other hand on his forehead to slow and pivot, she ripped her blade around to the rear of his neck, tearing his flesh to the base of his skull. His body went limp, collapsing in a twisted pile of a man. He did not bleed, Tia’s blade drinking his vitality so swiftly as to drain his body of color before his head hit the floor. She slipped from him, taking the ground gently and negotiating her momentum in a roll. Kicking right, she entered into one of the main corridors of the second floor, itself equally opulent to the first.

One of… what? We never pulled clear counts from that prisoner. No time for battlefield interrogation either. Dammit.

The corridor stretched straight for a full forty paces in the direction she ran. Two men at its end jumped in shock as they spotted Tia, one in half plate, the other in full. The fully donned man pulled his sword, the other ripped away a piece of linen at his side to reveal a tri-shot crossbow.

That makes five of those I’ve seen in syndicate hands. Why do they prefer them?

Tia broke into a sprint, dodging a bolt sent center mass at full bore, whistling as it did so. The second whizzed past her left ear, though she ran without altering her path, it simply missing her. She lept and burrowed her knife through his eye socket before he could loose the third. Such jumping attacks to the head were routine for her, her preferred method of killing from the front. His companion swung his sword at her desperately, but she avoided its path, it embedding in his already dead comrade. He anguished, his face widening as he realized what happened.

“Zach!”

Tia killed him all the same, a slash across his neck was all it took to end her third for the night.

You’re going to cry your friend’s name in distress the same night you commit treachery? How many have you killed to get assigned to a task like this? Fucking hypocrite. To think I used to be like you.

She rode the man she had killed to the ground, sweeping her eyes around. Aside from a pair of nobles and a maid, there was no one else around. She could distinguish no further opponents.

I’ve run into three on the floor that doesn’t contain the king's quarters. This junction has sightlines clear nearly through this wing, stair does too. Why are they guarding this floor, not the third? How many men could they have? Gagaran and Lakyus should have already encountered the men in the north stair. That leaves two other major junctions in this wing’s floor between the entrances to the second and third floor, three small servants staircases, two secret passages down, one that hits all three floors, and a secret bypass. I’ll check each.

Tia quickly decided upon a circuit, moving to her right. She swiftly built to full speed, but this taxed her. She did not have the endurance necessary to move so freely for so long as the floorplan, so she began to concentrate her aura in her breast, filling her diaphragm with the sum of her power. With this, she was able to take in deeper breaths - and pull more from them - giving herself the vigor necessary to maintain her pace for the length of her run. She reached the first junction, seeing no one of note on the approach. Tearing around the corner, she caught no one but nobility or maids in her vision.

Clear.

She kept moving, passing one of the secret entrances to the third floor, the secret bypass, and a servants staircase. The second junction was near the grand staircase on the east side of the palace, and as it came into sight she saw another body, donned in armor. She tried her best to spot details as she alighted and flew over them.

Marks from a warhammer on the breastplate, Gagaran’s work. If we had a message link, she could have told me. Evileye not running communications is exactly as much of a burden as I expected. Count five on the second floor.

She touched down, and continued. Her pace remained unbroken. Within twenty seconds she reached her next point of interest.

Second junction, clear.

Rounding another corner, she spied a man standing next to the second of three servant stairs, the only person in sight. He was looking in the opposite direction.

A sixth?

He pivoted round, his eyes going wide as he drew his blade.

“Hark! Identify yourself and sheath your weapon immediately.”

Maybe not, an actual guard?

“Tia of the Blue Rose. I will not sheath. There is a plot against the king. Where is your commander?”

“K-knight Avalon is two doors-”

He responded too quickly for that to have been a lie.

“Report to him now and-”

The guard suddenly stiffened. He fell, moaning as he did so, a red streak emerging from his back. She caught the fringes of a cloak disappear into the servant staircase, itself behind a doorway. Tailing the murderer, she jumped through the door before he could close it. She sunk her blade into his back as he attempted to descend, a maid a flight down screaming and losing her grip on a tray of dishes. The sound of clattering metal and crashing porcelain echoed throughout the space, Tia riding the man to the bottom as he slid down the steps in a way she found almost comical. Looking upward, she saw that this stair did not breach the third floor.

They’re guarding entrances and exits, but these exits are from the second to the first, not from the second to the third. If they wanted to prevent Ramposa III from escaping, they should all be on the third floor, not here. It doesn’t make sense. It’s almost as if they were trying to prevent a counter attack, but from who?”