A giant explosion lit up the inn against the night sky. Now a fiery inferno, the inn ruptured into an even more chaotic scene as customers came fleeing out of the burning building. The magical shockwave had shrapnel sent upwards and flying, showering parts of the city in debris. Pieces of timber and wood fell from it as the already crumbling walls formed giant cracks under the heat and pressure. Suddenly, a wall ejected from the building, launching into the nigh air before rapidly dropping, crumbling on impact. This was the final blow needed for this dying building and with the second floor breaking down, the rest of the building rapidly collapsed on top of each other, before the entire building dropped to the ground like a straw house trampled by Bellowers.
Slightly off the centre of this wreckage lay three people partially trapped under some rubble. Splintered wood stuck up like pikes all around them.
1*
Suddenly, the rubble shook and began to slide off as a man emerged from within. His clothing was torn and a dull sheen could be seen underneath his damaged outer garments.
“Ouchhhhsssss….I’m getting too old to do this.” He muttered, as he casted a wary glance at his surroundings whilst rolling his shoulder blades back and forth. “Sophia, you alright?”
“Fine sir, just need a moment.” The lady brushed away the soot and dust off her face. Though she had left active service for a while, her skills had clearly not dulled.
“Hmm… but that is strange, I would of expected the girl to have tried for one last attempt while we were falling or to have disrupted our landing-“
“She’s dead sir. And I smell poison in her breath.” Sophia moved her head away after confirming this, withdrawing her blade from the body and began inspecting it.
“Why is that not a surprise…a shame really, though she did serve as a fine cushion-SOPHIA!” The shout came as the assassin suddenly stood up again and lunged at Sophia’s unguarded back. Hearing the anguish in the scream, she reflexively swung her blade backwards with practiced smooth movements.
THUMP!
A body collapsed motionlessly on the floor, head severed. Flicking the blood away, she sheathed her swords again.
“Sir, we’ve served as bait long enough. It’s not safe here, we should go back now.”
“You’re right. Liam should be done by now, let’s go.” As soldiers and civilians quickly worked hand in hand to put out the flames and secure the area, two shadows quietly snuck away.
…
“So, what happened out there?”
Arch Wizard Alex stood sheepishly in front of the King as Sophia stared him down from the side.
“Apologies Sire, I could no longer support the two of you as an unknown assailant engaged me.”
“And what happened to this enemy?”
Alex reddened in embarrassment, quietly replying. ”They got away. I lost them moments after the giant explosion...”
“…Anything else that I should know of?”
“Um sir, this might sound like I’m making excuses, but the enemy’s magic felt weird, different…almost-“
“-Foreign?”
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
“Yeah, exactly! And all their attacks felt creepy… cursed even. Every time I deflected a magic attack; even their fire bolts, I felt slightly numb inside, and um, well, like I was drunk-“
“And I assume you haven’t been drinking on the job-?”
“Of course not! Sophia, why would you say that?!-” “-Not like it’s a first.” “Hey, c’mon, that was one time. Smell my breath-“ “It stinks.” “How can you even smell it from over-“
“Settle down the two of you. And Sophia, behave yourself, we both know that he only got drunk that time because his son had just been born.”
“Tsk.”
“Thank you for the impartial judgment Sire. I would never undertake such an important task casually sir. As you can see, Lady Sophia still holds a grudge just cause I walked in on Captain Lara and her when-“
“ENOUGH! I don’t want to hear another word about that out of you. Though you boast about your precision interpersonal magic being the strongest among the vice-captains, you are clearly not the best around here anymore seeing as you lost someone today. Not to mention you are lacking in many other skills. Enough, if I hear another word about it- I will personally remove you from the candidate list.”
KONK! KONK!
As everyone quietened down, the door slid open. The man outside quickly marched in before firmly shutting the door behind him, locking the manual bolts.
“Liam! Does that mean you are done with your end- WAH?!” Similar startled faces filled the room as he turned around with a grim pale face.
“Let’s all sit down first.” The King took the lead to sit down as the rest sat around the table.
“Is it fine for me to be here?” “It’s fine Alex, we are planning to tell the others soon anyways. So…?”
“Can I hear about how the meet up went first?”
“Sure. So as we thought, it wasn’t my daughter, but an assassin. Though we went disguised, I think they had their eyes already on us as they put laxatives in my drink; nearly got me killed. They must have known I had a strong resistance against poisons. Well, the assassin was really strong, but we managed to take her down. Building exploded so we fell out of the second floor. Not sure if the assassin faked death or got resurrected, but she nearly killed Sophia as well. And Alex here let some of there supporters get away. That’s about it.”
“I see…well guess it’s my turn…I’ll start with the good news, we captured both General Mordant’s son and Marquis Raquel. The bad news-“ “-That’s all the good news?!-” “-Quiet Alex!” “-There were a lot more of them than we expected, quite a few of them got away and we suffered heavy casualties despite the surprise attack. We have also had to… detain General Mordant as he was obstructing us; it would seem many of his family and followers had been in on it. If we were to execute all the traitors… we would be left with three members of his family and five followers, two of which had unknowingly helped them, though the acts themselves were perfectly sound and legal. Also, we have another traitor who we were unaware about that I just discovered. Vice-captain Malcolm.”
“ “MALCOLM!?” “
“-Never liked him. This is why you can’t trust commoners.” “-And it’s because of people like you Alex that-“
“-You TWO! QUIET...please continue Liam.”
“Yes sir. He didn’t come up in our initial investigation due to him not being in contact with the others. I only realised it due to neither of the other two being responsible for Lara’s death and some clues Raquel inadvertently dropped. All I had to do was ask who would benefit most from her death and Malcolm had plenty of motives- he was always the jealous type.”
“So where is he now?”
“He disappeared shortly before I realised. We must have startled him with our purge and I believe he may have fled the capital already. We individually questioned his subordinates, but they all seem clean.”
“What about the rest of the traitors?”
“Apart from the pawns, we captured most of the upper echelons and some of my trusted subordinates are currently torturing them for information.-”
“-Any other news? Especially about my daughter?”
“There seems to be some conflict in information, but it appears there is some internal discord between the collaborators and that she has escaped and that they have no idea where she is-“
“Great! If she gets back safely, I will definitely dote on her-”
“-Before that, I think you should learn about the worst news. You know how we have been hoping to dispel all those rumours and always thought they were exaggerations…well some of them may have been reasonable of even under estimations. This isn’t confirmed yet, but I believe there are at least four countries preparing to go to war against us.”
“FOUR?!”
“Wait a minute, we only border three countries, with the north being ocean, how are we-“
“My liege, apart from being backstabbed by the Four Clover Alliance it would seem the Holy Xeno Empire has also set their eyes on us. We have lost contact with our ambassador over there, but according to his last report; there had been an increase of ships being docked in the harbour. I believe we can expect costal pillaging at the very least.-“
“-But why?! What did we ever do to them! Why didn’t our diplomats do something earlier!? SOMEBODY TELL ME, WHAT DID WE DO WRONG?!!??!”
Everyone looked down, quietly avoiding the King’s eyes. Being King of Fei had never been an easy job. In terms of size, it was a small kingdom. In terms of heritage, it had a comparatively short history. In terms of economy, technology, magic development and even culture, it could be considered behind. It’s nobility could easily trace their heritage right back to their founding fathers who helped the first king found this country. Being the leader of such a small country, the problems faced daily over division of resources and personnel would be tiring to say the least. And now, the alliance built up to face larger countries, both in war and diplomacy, had plans to backstab him. His younger brother a duke, whether voluntarily or otherwise, had started a coup and his own daughter was missing. A blockade had been established around Frankfurt, but all attempts to sneak in had failed and anything short of a siege would fail. The King had been pushed past his limits.
“…Sorry everyone. I guess I’m getting too old to do this as well, huh.”
“…Not at all sir.” Liam shook his head in denial.
“We understand your under lot’s of pressure, so please don’t take it out on us.” Alex added.
“What he means is that we are all trying our hardest, so please don’t take the betrayals personally.” Sophia glared at Alex for a moment before adding, “And feel VERY FREE to take your anger out on him.” 2*
“Ha hah aha, I guess there are still some perks with you lot around.”
KONK! KONK! KONK!
“I’ll go see who it is and tell them to you at another time sir.” Sophia unlocked the door, poking her head out to ask, before shutting the door again.
“Sir, I think you should hear this.”