by Tamryn Tamer
“I know,” his partner said as the other two left for the evening. “It’s fucking ridiculous. Demis in this prison are treated better than fucking humans.”
Slade waited at the top of the stairs while listening to the men banter. Once he was sure that the other royal guards had left the prison, he started walking down the stairs.
All of the normal guard patrols were reduced and ordered to avoid areas that the royal guards were already covering. The justification being that royal guards were far more effective than standard prison guards, making the patrols unnecessary.
“Wish I could be out on the streets cracking skulls instead of stuck here,” a guard groaned while leaning on the wall. “Do you think anybody would say something if I just stepped inside for a little bit and tossed a few demis around?”
“If it were up to me, we’d both be doing it,” the guard said. “But apparently Princess Brynn Hilde checked on them today. I guess the devil-fucker gave her orders to ensure that they were safe. If she checks in tomorrow and finds otherwise she’ll go running to Herald Law.”
“Lucky fuck,” the other responded. “Can’t believe he gets to bury his cock in the princess. I would love to split that little cunt in half.”
“You couldn’t split a fucking fairy’s cunt with your tiny dick.”
“Fuck you,” the guard laughed. “Still a fucking tragedy that Princess Brynn is fucking that rancid bastard.”
“I kno…”
Neither of the men had time to react as Slade thrust his daggers into their throats, passing through their esophagus’ as the blades slipped right between the bones of their spine, killing them instantly. It didn’t matter if they were both two levels higher than him, a knife in the throat killed a level sixty just as easily as it’d kill a level one.
He grabbed the key to the cellar and unlocked the door before shoving it open.
“Huh?” several of the courtesans looked right through him as he stood in the doorway.
“Right,” Slade said, deactivating his invisibility. He looked around as the women shuffled nervously, clearly unsure of what to do. “Where’s the fox-eared cunt?”
“I assume you mean me,” Madam Gardenia said while waiving toward the rest of the demis in the room. “It’s fine everybody. I believe we are meant to follow Baron Slade.”
“Don’t say my fucking name,” Slade growled as he turned. “And we need to move fast. The patrols are currently all moving away from where we’re going but they’ll be circling back. So, get on your fucking feet and follow me.”
“Madam?” The courtesans looked to the crimson haired Kina for instructions.
“It’s as he said,” Madam Gardenia said as she followed him. “Let’s move.”
“Yes ma’am,” several women said, following behind Madam Gardenia.
“Put these fucking things on,” Slade said, tossing the fox-bitch a pack full of mud-spattered cloaks. She quickly removed them from the enchanted satchel and began distributing to the women. “Faster you slow fucking whores.”
“You could be nicer,” one of them said as she put her cloak on.
“Now ladies,” Madam Gardenia smiled as she placed the cloak over her shoulders. “You’ve heard worse language from worse people.”
“Let’s move,” Slade said heading up the stairs. “You better fucking keep up and mirror my steps as best you can.”
“Understood,” Madam Gardenia said as she followed behind him.
Slade moved cautiously, paying attention to everything around him as he walked up the stairs and down toward the rear exit of the prison where they generally dumped the garbage. It was right on the river and there was a small ramp toward the streets where wagons normally parked to bring in supplies. Normally a gate blocked the ramp but Slade picked the lock after the final delivery of the day, making it look as though the driver accidentally left it open.
He signaled for the whores to wait as he activated invisibility and stepped outside. After making sure that nobody was around, he deactivated his spell and signaled for them to follow him. They quickly moved up the ramp and slipped through the partially open gate.
It wasn’t unusual for guards to be ordered to avoid patrolling certain areas in Blackwater. The fact was the criminals were more fucking professional than most of the nobles in the damn city. When Fiora arrived the nobles that owned the surrounding farmland were selling food for twice what the city could afford. It was no fucking wonder that the people didn’t complain when Prince Erik was killed in the streets, he was a cunt.
Fiora couldn’t force the nobles to charge a certain price for food but she could sure as fuck make it easy for crime syndicates to smuggle in food and undercut their prices. She did the same with medicine, weapons, raw materials. All it took was leaking the patrol routes to the right people and the smugglers could operate without issues. She even allowed local farmers to sell their harvests without licenses simply by creating a policy that city guards needed to fill out a complicated twenty-page formal request before asking a business to provide their license.
When she and Slade arrived, the city was on the verge of fucking rioting and in a few months the entire city loved the cunt like she was the goddess herself.
“Where are we heading?” the fox-eared cunt asked as they followed the river south. “Shouldn’t we be heading west?”
“You think you get to leave through the fucking gate?” Slade chuckled. “Are you fucking stupid?”
“No,” she grumbled. “We should have gone west. There’s a passage in the northwest that the smugglers use.”
“Good to know,” Slade said. “Probably would have been better but it’s a little late for that.”
“Apparently,” she said. “So, where are we heading?”
“South grates,” Slade answered. “Now keep your fucking mouth shut. We’re not trying to draw attention.”
“What about the guards on the wall?” she whispered.
“They’re taken care of,” Slade snapped. “Now shut the fuck up. I don’t need a fucking helper.”
They worked their way south, occasionally weaving through alleyways to avoid areas that were too open, eventually reaching the southern river grate. On the edge of the river was a large wooden wheel with a chain attached used to lift the grate.
A portly soldier in a leather tunic began turning the wheel, opening the grate to allow any debris to float out of the city.
“I suppose I’m going to head off and take a piss,” the soldier by the wheel said as he saw Slade approaching. He hummed a tone as he wandered toward an alley.
“Alright,” Slade said, walking quickly toward the edge of the river. “Hope you can all swim. If you can’t you might want to stay near the walls.”
“That water is disgusting,” a cat-eared bitch growled as several other whores agreed.
“Well it’s either this water or a fucking club to the skull,” Slade said, pointing at the stream. “So, make a fucking choice. There should be some sorry looking fucks from the Monster Regulators out there with some carts of fucking skins. Jump inside of the fucking things as quickly as you can.”
“Thank you,” Madam Gardenia said. “We appreciate your assistance Baron Slade.”
“If you appreciate it then hurry the fuck up you slow cunt,” Slade snapped. “Get a fucking move on.”
“You better listen to him,” a tall man wearing blue and gold armor laughed as he approached on the sidewalk. Five more royal guards followed behind him, all of them ranged between level fifty-five and sixty-two
“Baron Slade,” the fox-eared woman looked back at the approaching guards. “What should we…”
“I said get in the fucking river,” Slade growled. “I don’t believe I fucking stuttered.”
“Should we wait for you when…”
“No,” Slade said, glaring at the patrol consisting of two holy knights, an elementalist, a ranger, and two assassins. “Just get out of here as fast as you can. And keep those fucking hoods up. Unders
tand me?”
As the soldiers came closer Slade couldn’t help but smile. He recognized the man leading the group as Count Royce and the Holy Knight next to him was the man he’d spent days searching for. Count Royce’s sharp eyes narrowed as a wicked grin formed on the vulture-like man’s face.
“Sir Geoffrey,” Count Royce gestured at the open grate. “If you would. We can’t have the animals escaping the pen.”
“My pleasure,” the elementalist smiled. The robed man lifted his arms and with them a wall of earth rose from the water, blocking their path out of the city.
“Keep going,” Slade said to the courtesans as they continued climbing in the river toward the stone barrier. “I’ll handle it.’
“Listen to him girls,” Madam Gardenia said as the remaining women all jumped in the water and started moving toward the stone wall. “If you can’t count on a man with his reputation, you can’t count on anybody.”
The invisibility spell was a closely guarded secret that only he and a few others on the continent knew. It required years of training in not only light but dark magic and very few mages ever bothered learning both.
The entire process was counterintuitive but one of the prerequisites of the Light Veil spell was Shadow Manipulation and a prerequisite for Shadow Manipulation was Light Manipulation. It was a ladder of spells that went back and forth until finally Invisibility was unlocked.
Over the years Slade had gone to great lengths to make it appear that he didn’t utilize magic in order to guard the secret. As far as most people were concerned, Invisibility was an advanced stealth ability.
“I suppose if I kill you all I won’t have anything to worry about,” Slade said, pulling out a pair of daggers. He kept nine on his person in total but the two he kept in his belt were the strongest. One of them was a parrying dagger, a short blade with a wide guard. The other was a special dagger, slightly longer with a narrower blade, almost like a needle. “I’ve been searching all over for you boys.”
“I know,” Count Royce chuckled. “Herald Law told us to keep out of sight after our run in at the embassy. Apparently, he had the same sneaking suspicion we did and ordered us to keep an eye on your activities. It looks like we were correct about you. Now, why don’t you surrender? Surely you don’t intend to fight us. We outnumber and out level you.”
“After all this time I spent looking for you?” Slade smirked. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve been looking forward to this. I’m just wondering which god I need to thank for this fucking bounty of soppy cunts being delivered unto me.”
“Such arrogance,” Count Royce laughed. “Herald Law did say you were rather rebellious. How many lashes did it take to break you during your time in prison?”
“Break me?” Slade chuckled. “No, the pain didn’t break me soft boy. It made me strong.”
Slade let the world around him darken as he stealthily cast Light Dampen on himself, a low-level shadow spell meant to protect his eyes from harsh sunlight. He waved his slender dagger like a wand and a massive burst of light exploded between him and the group, blinding everybody who looked at him.
“Fuck!” the royal guards said along with several other profanities as they reached for various potions that would cure the blindness. “What the fuck was that?”
They should have used a higher-level spell to block the path. A wall of mud and rocks pulled up from a riverbed wasn’t nearly durable enough. Slade might not have been skilled in elemental magic, but he had enough knowledge to create a hole in that weak wall. With a flick of his dagger the barrier blocking the whores split open, creating a path which they quickly moved through.
“Salvador,” the knight yelled, pointing at the women escaping the city. “Go after them!”
“I’m not going to let you do that,” Slade said as he created a Veil of Darkness around the men, blocking out all of the light as it swirled around them. It wasn’t a powerful spell but it was disorienting. Once the final harlot passed through the stone wall, Slade smashed the wheel holding the heavy grate open, causing the portcullis to fall and block the exit.
“Do you think children’s tricks like this will stop us?” Royce sneered, stepping out of the Veil of Darkness. “Salvador!” the knight snapped while pointing toward the west. “They’ll be heading west, cut them off.”
The assassin sprinted off without hesitation as Slade growled, irritated that he needed to chase the fucker, forgoing the opportunity to slice up Count Royce and the Holy Knight next to him that dared to lay a hand on Hestia. But he had a fucking job and the job took priority.
“You stupid fucking cunts are going to die tonight,” Slade snapped, chasing after the assassin. The only person in the group that could keep up with him was the other assassin as the three rushed toward the west gate. The rest of the royal guards followed, falling further behind by the second. “Make it easy on your fucking selves.”
“Oh, Baron Slade,” Salvador said with a high-pitched laugh while staying ahead of him. “You seem to have forgotten something important.”
“I doubt it,” Slade said, gaining a couple steps on the assassin.
“Let me remind you then,” the man said, laughing excitedly as he rushed forward. “This is Sir Salvador and I’m in need of assistance! Baron Slade is a traitor and attempting to kill me!”
“Fuck,” Slade growled as the man howled as they raced through the streets and alleys. If even a handful of royal guards heard the man screaming, he was in trouble. Even six of them would have pushed him to his limit but if the number increased, he was as good as dead.
“Do you get it now?” the man snickered as they reached the main street that led toward the western gate. “There are thousands of us in the city and only one of you!”
“I suppose so,” Slade said, realizing that the rest of the royal guards would catch up and they’d likely have gathered reinforcements as well. If he was taken alive, they’d torture him, execute him, and probably use all sorts of poisons to get him to talk. The last thing he wanted was to be brought in alive which made the decision easy.
It didn’t matter anymore if he handled things stealthily since he was probably going to die. That freed up some options on how to handle things.
Slade lifted his dagger and started focusing on the two most powerful spells he was capable of, the grand dark and light magics, Absolute Darkness and Daylight. He continued charging the spells, draining his mental strength as they rushed toward the western gate, concentrating on the man in front of him screaming for reinforcements.
He wasn’t a big fan of grand magic but if you were going to die, it was better to burn bright.
“Oh!” The assassin laughed like a maniac as they approached a group of nine royal guards leaving a tavern. “Looks like reinforcements! Help! Baron Slade is a traitor and he’s trying to kill me! Help!”
Despite their obvious drunkenness the royal guards turned and drew their weapons on reflex. But that didn’t really matter to him, his spells were charged and the only thing left was to cast them.
“Absolute Darkness!” Slade said, waiving his dagger as every light within a mile radius vanished in a sea of black. The stars themselves were eaten by the shadows as every person found themselves completely blind. The moment they tried to cast a light spell to provide them some vision, the darkness would devour it. The entire city could be on fire and not so much as a flicker would be visible while in the radius of the grand magic.
“What the fuck?” a man said. “Who’s there?”
“Just me,” another replied.
“Face the east and…”
“Which way is east?”
Slade kept his eyes closed as he continued forward, chasing the assassin, listening to the sound of his footsteps, trying to isolate them from the others.
“This trick again Baron Slade?” the assassin laughed in the darkness as they approached the guards. “Everybody, listen to the sound of my voice. We’re coming from this direction! Kill anybody coming from this direction a
fter I pass you! You’re not the only ones that can’t see! Neither can he!”
“This trick is different,” Slade said as he cast fifty quick Light Dampening spells on himself. The darkness was just preparation. His other grand magic was the trick. He pointed his dagger forward and cast his spell. “Daylight!”
“Wha…arrgh!” the assassin screamed in pain as the entire area was illuminated in blinding light. Even through the fifty layers of light dampening Slade could feel his eyes burning as the ball of flaming white light swirled in front of him. Slowly moving upward like a rising sun as the night sky vanished, replaced with a blue sky as if it were the middle of the afternoon.
“My eyes!”
“I’m fucking blind!”
The assassin tripped and fell in front of him and without hesitating Slade pounced, jamming his parrying dagger into the man’s skull, cleaving it open. As long as he was dead, nobody would be chasing the whores that escaped.
“Fuck!” another man cried out. “The potion isn’t working! What is this?”
Slade slit Salvador’s throat so deep he nearly took his entire head, just to be sure that the man couldn’t say a word. He dashed toward the stumbling group of royal guards in front of him and began going to work. Turning to kill the second assassin that’d been following him first by thrusting his dagger into the disoriented man’s eye, killing him instantly as it reached his brain. He finally turned toward the other nine royal guards that’d been pulled into the conflict.
“Godde…” a stumbling man gurgled as Slade slit his throat.
“Hel…” another tried to yell as Slade stuck him in the back of his neck, severing his spinal cord. The man fell like a puppet whose strings had just been cut.
“What’s happening!?” a guard wailed while sprinting in a direction, only to end up running into a building. Slade leaped on top of him and jammed both daggers in his eyes, finishing him.
He jumped from target to target delivering instant death to each soldier under the burning white light of his makeshift sun until it faded away and night returned.
Once the burning light subsided, people started looking out their windows to see Slade, covered in blood and the eleven eviscerated corpses of royal guards littering the streets. The royal guards that’d been chasing him caught up and with them were over a dozen more they’d picked up along the way.
