“That is acceptable. Now go and do as you need to, and I will deal with the intruder. Make sure my fellow citizens know not to attack any dungeon monsters that are sent to help guard the wall.” As soon as the core finished speaking, more magicyte tendrils connected to it till there was nothing to be seen of it. Dave didn’t know who Altracia thought was in charge, but he had clearly been dismissed.

  Since there was nothing more to say, Dave simply gated back to town. Once there, he explained the process. Everyone asked him what had happened. At first he didn’t know what all the commotion was about, but then he realized that he was a full six inches taller than he had been, and all of his gear had increased to match the size change.

  He begged off explaining now, saying it was just part of the benefit of having gotten Altracia to swear the oath. Emiri gave him the look that told him they would be discussing this later, but he was grateful that she didn’t make an issue of it now.

  “So did you decide on who would be coming with us?”

  Emiri answered, “Yes, and we’ve already had all the arguments while you were gone, so please don’t make this any more complicated. Mira is going to run to the capital. With her new speed enhancements and some spells, she can get there in less than an hour. I will utilize the other scroll. Your team will be made up of Sara, Sir Mun Hagen, Duleen, Fumihero and Kraden. I will be bringing Hannah, Deoca, Balayria, Daichi, and Jaselm. Once we get to Konig, Mira will join your group, while Balayria and Duleen will watch over Sara.”

  Dave looked around, and while there were some who clearly wanted to come but were not on the list, he nodded. After giving instructions to Sir Morganthal, Ozakai, and Talvenicus, they split into their teams. Dave pulled Emiri aside for a second and said, “I am sorry that I have been behaving oddly. I have reason to believe that the one Seimion calls Master has been trying to influence me. It isn’t like he was making me do things, but nudging me to be more arrogant and more violent. Will you forgive me?”

  “There is nothing to forgive. You are the love of my life. I’m sorry that it took all of this for me to realize how deeply I love you. I’m sorry it has taken me so long to adapt to this new life. But all I want now is to keep our family safe and carve out a little bit of paradise here in Eris’ Rise. Hopefully once this business is all over, we can retire to a quiet life.”

  “As you wish,” Dave replied, and they both smiled before kissing briefly. A groan from Mira ended that almost before it began.

  “I’m gonna start running. Just don’t take so long playing smoochie face that I beat you there,” she said and then was gone in a flash.

  With a final squeeze of Emiri’s hand, Dave walked over to where his group was gathered, and they both began reading the scrolls. The magic began to take effect almost immediately, but something went wrong in transit. It was almost like they hit a wall and bounced off.

  Interlude 3

  Duke Holstein shouted in triumph as the gates of Konig were opened. He ordered several of his knights to lead squads in to secure the gate. This was a victory. To his mind, the city had accepted him. The months spent sowing seeds of discord and fomenting unrest had paid off.

  Borstein had been brutal in his ambition. He manufactured strikes to cause food shortages and delays in receiving goods. This in turn caused the workers to not get paid, and the limited goods that did exist became dramatically more expensive. Soon only the nobles could afford even the essentials, and that only made them be hated more.

  No action showed how far Holstein was willing to go for power than the way he used his own daughter to seduce and entrap the king, a man whom he once would have called a friend. The desire for power had grown strong in him, and even he wasn’t quite sure at what point he had started actively committing treason or using his family. Of course, he reasoned if Harold were strong, he would have managed to hold on to his throne. And as for his daughter, well, he thought, to be technical, she was only his illegitimate daughter.

  Yet it was her son who would provide the ticket for him to power. A male heir from the two strongest houses in Albia would be an easy way out for the assembled nobles. They might balk at giving the throne directly to Holstein, since he might be seen as a usurper. It would be far easier to name him as regent.

  He smiled as he looked at his chief knight. “Have the cages wheeled up to the castle. Make sure you keep the curtains down. Then release them into the castle. I will handle it from there.”

  The unease on the man’s face was impossible for Holstein to miss, but he chuckled. He refused to let anything put a damper on his mood. It was all going perfectly. Now as he rode into the city, the people were cheering and waving at him. He felt it was only his due.

  Harold Borstein was walking back and forth in his throne room. “How could this happen? Why have the people betrayed me? The gate guards must have sided with them, or that rabble would never have been able to open the gates to our enemy.”

  Eleazor and Gunidar along with half a dozen royal guards were the only ones in the throne room besides the king. He kept speaking, kept asking questions but never really directed them at anyone.

  “It may not be too late, yet, Sire,” Eleazor offered.

  “What do you mean?” Harold asked as he turned on his trusted servant.

  “The reports are that the western army is not more than a day’s march from the city. If Baron Eikhorn is the man that I think he is, then he will side with you. All we need to do is come up with a plan to delay the duke. Perhaps if he thinks that you will concede power but want to call a formal congress of lords. Just act willing to work with him for a smooth transition,” the steward said.

  “All I want to do is kill that man, now. How dare he do this to me? We hunted together as young men. I know things have grown cold over the years, but treason. This just seems too far,” Harold said mournfully. Then he looked at Gunidar. “Why can’t you just strike him down? He and I both hit level twenty-nine around the same time, so I have a good idea of how much power he can have.”

  The royal mage sighed. “I am the royal mage, not an assassin. I work for the benefit of the kingdom. But more than that, he is Tier 4 now. I don’t know how, but he most definitely is. I cast the divination twice. There is also something unstable about his aura that I have never seen before. It is almost as though he has been artificially boosted.”

  “None of this helps me deal with him,” Harold said.

  Eleazor rubbed the bridge of his nose and said, “Sire, you are only frustrated and not thinking clearly. The point is that if Holstein’s forces are outside the city walls, they will easily fall to the western army. At least assuming Eikhorn brought sufficient numbers. His men will be far more experienced than Holstein’s household troops and more loyal than any mercenaries that the duke managed to hire.”

  The king paced back and forth as his steward continued to speak. During a lull, he said, “Continue.”

  “Realistically the only reason that Holstein was able to take the city was that Faelora chose now to attack. Which, of course, does suggest one other possibility. I dread to think of it, but what if Holstein is working in conjunction with the Faelorans?”

  “What do we do then?” Harold asked.

  The three men threw various ideas around, but in the end no course of action was taken. Eventually the duke entered the throne room, and Harold stared at him. Finally, the source of all his rage was in front of him. “You, you caused all of this. I can’t believe that even you were so desperate for power that you would turn to the Faelorans.”

  “I had nothing to do with that. Remember, all of this could have been avoided if only you had kept your hands to yourself,” the duke replied. Even as he spoke, he kept walking, striding across the throne room. He snapped his fingers. Suddenly there was a skittering sound all around them.

  The royal guards drew swords and shouted as humanoid scree-fiends poured into the throne room behind Holstein, who was grinning ear to ear.

  Gunidar made a snap decision. He first quick-cast a long-range message spell and then instantly gated to his safe spot. The screams of those left behind stayed with him though.

  Konoe and Yua sat on the throne as their agent reported. Yua was the better of them with people, so she reminded her husband, “Her name is Hina.”

  “Thank you,” he replied quietly.

  The agent walked in. She was a young woman, probably not more than one hundred years old. She bowed now, showing great respect for the throne. Then she looked meaningfully side to side.

  Konoe said, “Don’t worry, it is secure here. The guards have been excused, and this room is warded. No one will be able to hear your report. I assume you have important news.”

  “Something like that,” Hina said. Then a smile parted her lips. A certain evil expression grew on her face. “No one will hear your screams.”

  Both Yua and Konoe stood up and immediately drew weapons. Both were stunned by the twisting Hina’s form underwent. Her body swelled and expanded. Her skin split, and her long, dark hair was instantly shed onto the ground, but through it all she didn’t make a sound.

  Yua reacted first. Her hand extended, and a streak of fire burst into the chest of the growing creature. It was knocked back, but it was back on its feet almost immediately. A horribly twisted frame, its arms were differing lengths and bent at weird angles. The legs turned back on themselves, and a spiked tail grew out of her backside. Wings ripped out of her back, and a forked tongue jutted out of the mouth that had distended into a wolflike snout.

  “You prepared for I be. Death I am.” The elf corrupted into a winged terror rushed forward, propelled by its wings. Long talons extended in front of it.

  Yua worried, as she knew that fiends were particularly resistant to fire, but she did have other tricks. She just didn’t know what kind of protection it could have against Konoe’s powers. She watched as her husband leapt forward with two curved daggers. The air around him was distorted and time began shifting.

  Normally her husband’s magic could steal time and allow him to move between the seconds. It made him too fast to follow for short bursts, or if used offensively, he could even steal time away from an opponent. If done enough, it could kill. The technique, of course, worked much better with short-lived creatures, and whatever kind of fiend this was, it undoubtedly had a very long life span.

  Still, whatever magic it was using brought stillness to the air, and Konoe’s normal flickering steps as he jumped from second to second were awkwardly halted. He wasn’t prepared, then, when her claws slashed him across his chest and pierced the heavily enchanted leather he wore, leaving three furrows across his chest.

  Worse, those furrows didn’t bleed properly but were bubbling with blackness. She could hear as someone was pounding outside the door. Yua had to hope that they went to get Hidenori. He was the only one who could bypass the security measures on this most sacred of rooms.

  The fiend turned back towards her and croaked, “This see now, helpless one.”

  “Fiend, you aren’t the only one who has a trick or two up her sleeve.” Yua had decided it was time to pull out all the stops. She started weaving fire in a swirl around her.

  The fiend laughed and taunted her, “Learned not has stupid one. Immune to flame be this child of the abyss. Powers of pyromancer harm me not.”

  “This is an opportunity for you, then, albeit short lived, to learn something. Pyromancer is a common class. Not one that the Throne of the People would possess. I am a Flame Paragon, and I can do things with fire that no other can,” Yua yelled back, more in an effort to give her time for her greatest class spell to build up than because she cared to trade barbs with this monster. The only thing she really wanted was to get healing for Konoe.

  The swirl of flames that was dancing in front of her now began to unravel and lash around the fiend. They spun faster and faster, lashing around the fiend till she was encased in a tornado of flame. Yua tensed and poured all of her mana and all of her strength of will into holding the spell form. The flamed condensed until they formed a barrier that pushed back the fiend.

  They condensed further and began to burn even hotter. Soon they were pure white and were beginning to scorch marks in the wooden floor of this room, which had been reinforced with mana for over one thousand years so that it was both stronger and more pliable than steel.

  Still, Yua pushed harder. She drew mana from the well at the center of the belt around her waist and pushed it all into the spell. The flames condensed more and turned a brilliant violet. All the oxygen in the funnel of flame was consumed, and the laughing of the fiend had long since stopped as it clutched its own throat, trying to gasp for a breath. Then it fell to its knees, and still the flames condensed around it.

  The heat was searing the walls of the great tree they resided in and only growing hotter. Yua’s eyes pulsed with a purple light that matched the flames as she gave of her very life force to empower this spell. When her strength was no more, she fell to the ground in a heap. Where the fiend had been was nothing. It had been burnt to a fine powder, and that powder consumed by the vortex of fire she had created.

  She couldn’t give in to weakness now, though; her husband needed her. Her people needed her. She began crawling across the room towards Konoe, hoping she could save him with a potion or that Hidenori would finally make it here. Her mind raced even as her body crawled. This level of attack on them had required a great deal of effort. They had to be onto something. The problem was whom to trust. Oddly, the only person that came to mind was the newest elven noble, Lady Emiri.

  Seimion snuck into the cavern. The corpses of dwarven guards littered the hallway outside. In all his time on Talos, he had snuck many times because it served his or the Master’s purpose. This time, though, he snuck for he genuinely feared the creature inside. His people did not have a good history with her kind. More than that, she was an accomplished spell caster, or so the tales went.

  Still, he did not question his master, so inside he went. Chained up to the wall, he found a simple woman. She was not at all what he had expected. Clearly not human, but still, her scaled skin could have passed for a golden tan from a distance. Her clawed hands and feet were held up tight to the wall, as was the thick tail that extended out the back of her tattered robes, by crystal shackles.

  Seimion chuckled. “Oh, how the mighty have fallen.” The histories told of her proud opposition to the Master’s will. How she alone had defied the ban. She had travelled to Talos with those being purged. The more than a millennium that had passed was not kind to her.

  How she looked to be little more than a skeleton with scales, a robe for modesty. Her eyes were deeply sunk in, and her breathing was shallow and strained. The Master had been unwilling to tell Seimion how she had come to be in this situation, only that she had. To the spiderkin, it was just a result of her hubris.

  But he wasn’t here to taunt her. He didn’t even say a word. Unlike many others who claimed to serve the Master, Seimion really did. His will and desires were subjugated to those of the one fit to rule all. So rather than kicking her or biting her as he would have liked, he knelt down.

  Taking out a heavily enchanted key from his robe, he shook the dwarven hand that was still attached to the key ring. He turned it, and the chains glowed a faint blue and then began to dissolve as though they were made of crystalized sugar and he had just poured hot water onto them. Whatever enchanted material had composed the shackles was now puddled at his feet.

  Seimion dropped to his knee and uncorked an empty vial that he pulled out of an inner pocket. He then dipped it into the now liquid material and collected a small sample. It was a substance that he had never seen, and absent any orders from his master, he could allow some room for his curiosity.

  A quick spell then scored the stone wall she had been hanging up against before the chains were dissolved. Now she was crumpled on the floor, but when she woke up, she would recognize the rune without a doubt. This should be interesting, and Seimion looked forward to seeing how this played out.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  “A man thinks that he is the hunter, stalking his intended. He courts her. He follows her. Sometimes he learns that all along he has been a fish upon a hook.”—Miromaran proverb

  Konig—Jackson Nelson

  The last three days had brought complete chaos. Jackson had felt the hero in Rostock, but here he felt helpless. Duke Holstein’s army had been admitted into the city. Then they set up their own guards and were not allowing anyone else into the city.

  Worse, there was a steady stream of smoke coming up from various spots around the city and intermittent screaming. Not the kind of screaming that Jackson had come to expect in a battle. This was the kind of screaming from the helpless who cried out in fright. It was setting everyone’s nerves on edge and turned Jackson’s stomach.

  Captain Aremay was frantic to get inside the city. His griffon squad had landed outside the city, and he was of a mind to attack the city with just the six of them despite Max’s protests that they would simply be shot down. The only thing that convinced him to remain outside was the eerie green flames that were emanating from braziers all along the top of the wall. Still, every time he heard a scream, he clinched his fist, and Jackson didn’t know how much longer he would wait.

  Truth be told, he was more than a little worried for his friends inside. That was what Gianna and Milessa had become, he thought. They had fought together, eaten together, and laughed together. What else could they be but friends? He worried just as Naat’ha did that the princess would be used as some kind of political prisoner.