“As the Hexad bestows, so can the Hexad revoke.”

* Ushorin proverb

Prinner Wilholm, age 27, in full armor, sword sheathed and back straight, stood at attention. Across from him stood Tomas Calendom, heir of the Calendom trade network fortune, a smug smile on his face, each of his arms looking as thick as Prinner’s body, towering at almost a foot taller than him and a hundred pounds heavier. Saral Falorn, light hair carefully brushed and straightened, stood at attention equidistant from the two of them, the three of them forming a tense triangle.

“Who do we war against?” The newly crowned of Esultare asked, his voice colder and colder with each passing day.

“The Gontans. The rebellious Frostlander clans. Any elements of this continent who won’t kneel to us as they should.” Calendom answered quickly and confidently.

“Wrong.” Stillbottums said. “We war against no-one. All the truly formidable clans have been destroyed or surrendered to the Throne. We are at peace with Gontad, and we take a third of the food they produce and draft a quarter of the men who come of age there each year into the Army. Any other rebellious enclaves have been crushed or are so small as to be practically nonexistent.” The clasped his hands behind his back. “No, the truest answer is that Esultare, despite being a unified nation-continent with the largest military seen since the Century of Bloodshed, wars with no-one, conquers nothing. We are trapped-- I am trapped-- in a vast, suffocating web of diplomatic treaties and binding compacts, several of which make it so that if I attempt to claim another continent’s land, all six of the others will band together to defeat me.”

“So how can we break them without bringing ruin down on our heads?”

“Why should we?” The question was out of Wilholm’s mouth before he even thought it through.

The stalked over to him, got within an inch of him, staring Wilholm directly in the eyes. He grabbed the man by the throat and hefted him sixes off the ground with one hand, never blinking the entire time. The force of the ’s made Wilholm gasp, and the edges of his vision fuzz with blackness. He wriggled and tried to reach for his sword to fight back, when suddenly the force of the menacing man lessened and he let go, lip curled in disgust, as the tumbled to the floor, desperately dragging in shallow, ragged breaths through his bruised windpipe.

“That you even ask such a question speaks to how little you have learned in your time as one of my personal trainees. To answer your naive question, we make war because it is our duty, our right, our pleasure to conquer as much of Esun as we are able. Such is our birthright as Esultarens. We must constantly push ourselves to destroy, to rule, to make all that is kneel to us, lest we lose the grace of the greatest of the Archons himself.” Turning to Calendom and nodding slightly, who in turn grinned a massive, malicious grin, the went on.

“As for how we will go about breaking our treaties without shattering everything I and my forebears have built, I have a simple solution: sow confusion and discord. Allow our enemies to shatter themselves before pillaging the disjointed pieces, stomping into the dirt any rebellion that stands against us. You, Calendom, and you, Salar, as well as Devolion and Andrium, will become the aristocracy of a new world, united under one banner-- my banner, evermore, serving me as your sole superior, the supreme ruler of all that is and ever shall be.” By the end, the very air around the was so heavy with the power and vitriol of his words that Calendom and Saral were both forced to take a step back from him. Wilholm was reduced to crawling weakly a few inches away.

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The turned ominously, his iron gaze falling upon Wilholm. “As for you, ingrate, while you don’t have the will, you do have higher levels than either of your fellow , against all logic. Stand up!” He grabbed the man by his arm and dragged him roughly to his feet. “You will battle Calendom, as he is the least successful of the three of you, though he has the heart of a true conqueror. If you can remain on your feet for one minute, I will allow you to live. If not, I will leave you to him.”

Wilholm squared up, drew his sword, and looked Calendom dead in the eyes, unflinching.

🟌

Bim used every relevant Talent he had. , , and were all working overtime to keep him unnoticed and unaccounted for. He met up with Helena in a narrow hallway, and headed deeper into the East Wing, and were, at last, at the top of the stairs leading down into the out of the way, heavily guarded chamber where Fool’s Bane, Stillbottums’ Spellbreaker Blade, was kept.

The six heavily armed and armored guards. stationed outside the stone door to the chamber that was their destination were standing at attention, eyes glassy, breathing and blinking at regular, almost mechanical, intervals.

“Bound. We should have expected this.”

Bound were people, altered by an esoteric and powerful ritual, wiped of their identities, given single, core Directives, that they followed without hesitation. They didn’t feel pain, or really any emotions at all, and worked efficiently and with minimal food, water, and rest to accomplish what was asked of them by the one who Holds their Bond. Their primary limitation was that they were specialists; ask them to do something that goes beyond the scope of their Directive, and they would just stand there. They could innately see through most -type Talents, which threw most of Bim’s Class in the garbage. “Helena?” He asked, uncertain.

“I have a solution, but you’re not going to like it.” The responded. “It will involve lives being taken.”

“People are dying in the streets as we speak. A few Bound dead will be a tragedy, but a necessary one.” The said, after mulling over her words for a few moments.

“Alright. Three, two, one…” She breathed out, stepped out from the nook they had ducked into, pulled her bow from her back, knocked an arrow, and fired, all in one motion. The closest Bound fell dead, arrow through their eye, in the next breath. The other five immediately scattered, scanning the corridor almost robotically, fanning out into defensive positions, two of them, wielding bows, falling to one knee and knocking arrows as swiftly as possible while the other three living Bound readied blades and locked onto Helena. Before they could do scant else, another arrow flew through the eye of another Bound, which stumbled back and collapsed dead like its fellow.

Meanwhile, Bim had taken off at a dead sprint, dodging past the grabbing arms of one of the four still standing, and sprinted down the steps of the staircase winding into the dark, taking them two at a time.