“I love you, too,” she replied. She slid out from beside me and stood up, bending over to plant a gentle kiss on my forehead. “We should get ready.”
I folded my legs into a comfortable meditative stance and sighed. “You’re right. I’m going to try and do something about this headache, and then I’ll be good to go.” With a deep breath, I tapped into my mana reserves and began the process of channeling it throughout my body, as I normally did in my practices with Lia. As I expected, the pain in my head immediately lessened as the energy coursed through my veins.
Maybe it’s just...mana withdrawals? Although I had no other point of reference to base my hypothesis on, being able to assign a name and explanation to my condition helped to ease my nerves. Until I’ve built up a tolerance to extreme mana usage, I should hold off on pushing my enhancements to that extreme. Especially in combat. Through trial and error, I found a level of constant channeling that reduced the headache to a manageable level, though I hoped the effort wouldn’t be needed for long.
I opened my eyes to find the room aglow with orange light from the setting sun. “I guess it’s time,” I sighed as I stood up and stretched, eliciting a loud crack from my shoulders. I moved towards the door, but Lia held out a hand from her seat on the storage chest to stop me.
“Marin and Val are saying their goodbyes. We should wait a minute,” she explained, slowly unfolding herself from her meditation stance.
“Oh. Sure,” I nodded, taking a seat next to her and stretching my arm out around her shoulders. “You know, this is your last chance to—”
She punched my knee with a force somewhere between playful and aggravated. “Stop saying that. I’ve told you a hundred times by now: I’m not leaving you. Wherever you go, I go.”
I chuckled and rubbed my knee. “I know, I know. I’m just worried that I’m forcing you into all of this danger and not giving you a choice. I promised your parents that I would do everything in my power to keep you safe and happy, and sometimes...it doesn’t feel like I’m doing a very good job.”
Lia huffed. “I don’t care about the promises you made to my parents, I care about the promises you made to me.” She took my face in her hands and turned it towards hers, meeting my eyes with an intense stare. “You told me you love me, and that you want to be with me. That’s what I care about. As long as we’re together, we’ll keep each other safe. And I’ll be the happiest girl in the world.”
My cheeks flushed beneath her hands, and a large smile spread across my face. “I’ll keep those promises, no matter what.” I leaned in and kissed her deeply as my heartbeat went wild in my chest. Love was still a fresh emotion for me after a lifetime without it, and I reveled in the feeling eagerly. My hand ran up her leather chestpiece to her neck, and I traced the line of her jaw with the back of my fingers until they combed through the loose hair behind her ear. I felt my passion echoed back at me as our mana coalesced around us, and for a brief moment I was overwhelmed as our emotions blurred together.
The door opening beside us brought me crashing back down to reality. We disentangled from each other awkwardly and jumped up from the small storage chest, but the door slammed shut before I could see who was behind it. A quick scan forward revealed Val standing on the other side, staring straight ahead with an embarrassed expression as her hand still held the door handle. A soft knock followed shortly after. “May I enter?”
I nearly fell back onto the chest as I burst out laughing. Lia glared at me with a beet red face as she hurried to straighten her hair, then hopped forward and opened the door. “Hi, Val.”
“Hello, Lia,” Val replied quietly. She looked past towards me, but looked away before we made eye contact. “Lux,” she nodded to the floor. “The nobles will be out for their nightly errands any moment. We should leave soon.” For the first time since we had breached the walls of Attetsia, the magic concealing her armor was gone, revealing its true resplendent nature once again.
“We’ll be right down,” I said, mostly composed after my laughing fit. “Thank you, Val.” She stood in the doorway for a few moments before abruptly turning to leave, closing the door as she went. I crossed the room and hugged Lia from behind, leaning down to rest my chin on her shoulder. “Are you ready?”
She took a deep breath, then nodded. “Ready.” We stood together quietly, neither of us willing to leave what was likely the last private moment we would have together before the coming trials. Begrudgingly, I gave her a final squeeze, then moved to the door. We filed out of the room and descended the narrow stairs to find Val and Marin waiting for us at the bottom. Marin’s eyes were bloodshot and puffy, and she had a serious expression on her face.
“Good luck tonight,” she said solemnly. “Thank you for helping our city. I owe you both a huge debt.”
Lia moved forward and hugged Marin tightly, speaking something into her ear that was too soft for me to make out. Marin nodded and returned the embrace, replying to whatever Lia had said with a small smile. They both laughed as they separated, and Lia returned to my side.
“Thank you for housing us here, Marin. It was very brave of you.” I smiled and gave her a small bow. “Stay safe tonight, okay? We’ll come back as soon as we can, once our job is done.” She nodded in response and, after looking up at Val one final time, slid past us to make her way upstairs. We all waited to exit the back room until her bedroom door opened, then closed again. “So,” I started, leaning up against the counter, “let’s talk strategy.”
As expected of the night before a battle, I felt a sudden clearness of mind paired with a terrible twisting in my stomach. I pulled the needle out of my bandolier and began to dispense the small, silver globes from their respective canisters as I began my speech. “Our first objective is straightforward: enter the Council district without being detected. Val, as you’ve been to the city before, you’ll take the lead while Lia and I make sure we never get too close to a patrol.”
Val’s impassive facade broke momentarily as the first globe expanded and began to glow in my hand, casting a shadow of my hand down onto the countertop with dim orange light. Her eyes sat transfixed on the orb with wonderment for a long moment before she finally looked back up to me. “How will you ensure the guards do not find us?”
“Magic,” I stated, trying to impart as little sarcasm into the word as I could. I set the finished healing globe on the counter and started on the next one. “Once we reach the Council district, we’ll make our way to the statehouse. Our goal there is to find any sort of entrance that they’ve left unguarded: a door, a window, or, as a last resort, a long stretch of wall that’s out of the way of any patrols.”
“The statehouse is positioned at the center of the city, built out on a small cliff face overlooking the harbor,” Val explained. “The wall is too shear to approach directly from the rear of the building, but there is a large plaza at the entrance. Should we find a way to sneak through it to the back of the statehouse, there are multiple exits that may still be unguarded.” She finished her debriefing and motioned for me to continue.
“Once we’re inside, Lia and I will take the lead scouting. We need to find the Conduit,” I continued as my collection of mana globes grew larger. “The Conduit is the original person who summoned the Dominion, and they’re the link between this world and wherever the Dominion comes from. If we kill them, that link breaks, and their presence here goes away,” I snapped my fingers for emphasis, “just like that. I’m hoping that one of the leaders of the Company is the Conduit, so we can kill two birds with one stone.”
“What happens to all of the people that the Dominion controls when we kill the Conduit?” Lia asked.
“It depends on how far along they are in the transformation; the further along they are, the more they’ll lose when the Dominion leaves. If they still have control of their minds, they’ll just go back to normal with minimal side effects: scars, slightly distended limbs, nothing too serious. Hopefully there aren’t any fully transformed Thralls out there
, but if there are, they’ll die when the connection breaks.”
Val and Lia digested the information silently, and I took the opportunity to look over my work. There were eleven orbs set out in neat rows before me: five glowing orange, three flickering a much brighter blue, and three that were an almost translucent white with wisps of smoke within. I sorted them into two even groups and pushed them out towards my two companions, leaving one of each color for myself. “Here. These are for you.”
Val looked down at the globes with trepidation, her hands pinned to her sides. Meanwhile, Lia reached out immediately and snatched up the blue and white globes to give them a closer inspection. “I’ve never seen these ones before! What do they do?”
I looked to Val and gently tapped the orange globe. “If you break this open, the liquid inside will close any small to moderate wounds. It won’t heal any major internal injuries, but it’s great for staunching cuts on the battlefield. The material it’s made of is weak enough that you can crush it in one hand.” I picked up the orange orb I had left for myself and crushed it over my outstretched arm in example. The viscous liquid inside spilled around my bracer and plopped down onto the countertop, where it bubbled and steamed as it evaporated away.
There was a moment where I thought Val was going to jump away from the table, but her initial shock faded quickly as the liquid disappeared. I turned to find Lia holding the blue orb up to her eye for analysis. “You do NOT want to be near the blue one when it breaks,” I said, gently lowering her hand away from her face. “It explodes when the contents are exposed to air, spreading a paste that burns at extremely high temperatures for a long time.” She froze in place, then carefully lowered it down to the counter. “It has a thick skin,” I laughed, “so you have to throw it pretty hard to make it go off.
“The last one is a concentrated smoke bomb. It’s pretty straightforward, all things considered. I’d recommend holding your breath if you’re breaking it nearby,” I explained. “Any other questions?”
There was a long pause before Val spoke up. “How did you make these? What are they?”
I sighed. “Magic,” I answered again, but I paused a moment in consideration. “No, alchemy. Both, I guess.” Her brow furrowed as she narrowed her eyes at me. “Listen, I’m sorry to be so vague about it. Our number one priority is to succeed at this mission, and I’m not going to withhold any of my abilities if they could give us a greater chance at success. But I can’t really explain them, either.”
Her eyes relaxed to a kinder look. “I understand. Thank you.” Her and Lia both loaded the orbs into satchels attached to their waists. “Is that all?”
“No, there’s one more thing.” I took a deep breath. “This mission has to succeed. No matter the cost, it has to succeed. This is bigger than any of us; if the Dominion leaves this city, the world will end.” I looked between the two of them. “I will do everything I can to make sure we all get out of this alive, but…” My head fell, unable to meet their eyes at the implication of my statement. “No matter the cost.”
Lia took my hand. “We’re all in this together, and we’ll all come out of it together. We’ll finish this, I promise.”
“Lia is right,” Val added. “I believe in this plan. I believe in our abilities. We will come out of this victorious. All of us.”
“Thanks, guys,” I said, raising my head. Their show of faith gave me the final boost I needed to move out from behind the counter. “I guess it’s time to go, then.” Together, we made our way to the front door, but my hand paused as I grabbed the door handle. I looked over my shoulder to give them each a final nod of confidence. “Ready?”
“Ready,” they answered in unison.
“Alright then,” I said as I pulled open the door. “Let’s go.”
***
13. THE STORM
The sea of civilians was an overwhelming mess of multicolored lights in my head as we stepped down onto the street. Having never used Detection in such a large crowd of people before, I had underestimated the immense volume of information that would need to be processed to make use of the ability. Luckily, pairing it with my Combat Acceleration enhancement provided my brain enough power to parse the data in real time, and the world snapped into crisp focus around me all at once.
I took a moment to appreciate the beauty of the scene before us. Each person among the crowd had a unique mana signature, differing in color, feel, and intensity: An elderly gentleman with a serene, tidal blue aura brushed past my arm, following close behind an austere young woman with a fuschia energy that flickered like a dying neon light. Having never been awakened before, their auras were dim, especially compared to Lia’s expanded mana reserves that shone brilliantly to my right and Val’s shield directly ahead of me. Even so, the sight awoke a sense of fascination within me; I had made so many breakthroughs since arriving in Kaldan, but had yet to find a time of peace in which I could study them more thoroughly.
Lia seemed to be struggling as we began to make our way through the crowd, her gait oddly stiff as the Detection ability consumed the whole of her focus. I reached out towards her consciousness beside me and impressed the sensation of Combat Acceleration on her mind. A moment later I saw the enhancement flare to life in her aura, and her step returned to a normal pace. “Don’t use too much of your mana,” I whispered, leaning down to her ear. “I can keep us covered if you need to take a break.”
Our trip was uneventful at its outset; we were just another group of strangers among the throng of civilians running their nightly errands, and the Company and Unbound soldiers were absent on the main thoroughfare. However, our cover ran out completely after our second turn as Val led us into an area that was marked as off-limits to Attetsian civilians. Communication became pivotal as our quest continued.
“Are we taking the next right?”
“Yes.”
“Double time to the corner, three guards entering the street behind us in...nine seconds.”
“Is our path guarded ahead?”
“Two men standing watch three hundred feet up, but they’re facing the wrong way. There’s an alley we can take to avoid them.”
“Understood.”
The following hour was a non-stop push through the guarded streets of the Noble’s district. Our path was often erratic, full of backtracking, winding side streets, and hushed movements, but we successfully remained undetected throughout the ordeal. I let out a hard sigh when Val finally informed us we had reached the Council district, and that our target was less than a mile away.
I found the statehouse with Detection long before we had a clear line of sight. My stomach dropped when the image appeared in my mind; a large semicircle plaza opened up where all of the main roads converged, and it was packed shoulder to shoulder with guards. I reached out and stopped Val as I scanned further ahead through the crowd. “Wait. Something is happening in the main plaza up ahead. Some sort of gathering. I don’t know what they’re—”
The words caught in my throat as the rest of the courtyard came into view. While the outside edges of the crowd were made up of Unbound and Company men, the center of the group glowed with a distorted purple energy that made my skin crawl. The gathering stood before a tall wooden stage that sat empty apart from a single podium at its center. Beyond that, a wide stone staircase led up to our final target: the statehouse. “The Unbound, the Company, the Dominion...they’re all there,” I whispered. “It looks like they’re waiting for something.”
“We should get closer. I still cannot see anything,” Val responded.
I scanned the area surrounding the plaza, then motioned for the group to follow as I carefully moved ahead. A ransacked one-story building stood at the corner of the plaza closest to the statehouse, with its windows smashed open and the door knocked off of its hinges. The entrance to the building faced onto a side street opposite the mass of guards, and a row of shattered windows overlooked the plaza, making it a perfect vantage point to observe the gathering. It was easy enough
to sneak inside; the sun had completely set which provided us ample shadows to hide in, but beyond that, the streets between us and the crowd of guards were empty, most likely abandoned to attend whatever event was about to begin.
After one final sweep through with Detection, we crept into the building and moved to the far wall, crouching just below the line of chest-high windows. I lowered myself gently to the ground, sitting with my back against the wall, and motioned to Lia and Val to do the same. “We’ll have to wait for...whatever this is to finish before we look for our entrance,” I whispered, barely loud enough to hear myself.
Lia tugged at my arm. “Look,” she murmured, not motioning towards anything—at least, not with her hands. I felt her mana rush over me in a thin band, running consistently in one direction. With my own energy I followed her out through the crowd, over the stage, and up the wide staircase to the front door of the statehouse, which was now open. Three figures stood at the entrance to the building, surveying the large crowd before them.
The man leading the group was dressed in a garish fur coat that dragged along the ground behind him, and an equally flamboyant hat with a large feather protruding from one side. The back of his coat was emblazoned with the sigil of the Elta’sahn company, as were his gloves, boots, and earrings. His hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail that reached the bottom of his shoulder blades, and he had a neatly groomed goatee that surrounded a mouth which seemed to be stuck in a constant smirk. The light of his mana was like the glow of old campfire coals, a hardly flickering orange deep in his core.
To his right was a man in full battle attire, wearing beautifully crafted chainmail beneath thick pads of hide armor. While I had placed the first man around Val’s age, the armored man looked to be at least in his sixties based on the deep wrinkles creasing his face. His gear was similarly marked with the Company sigil, stamped onto the faces of his greaves, cuirass, and bracers, as well as engraved on the hilt of the two longswords he wore belted to his waist. His aura radiated a silver light that never seemed to falter or wane. He watched the crowd before him with a steely gaze, not betraying any emotions.
Restart Again: Volume 2 Page 24
