slifer274

15.7: Dakheng, Divided VII

Assess the situation. Identify your goals and how you will get to them.

Well, the situation wasn’t terribly tough. Most of what these commoners had going for them was their volume. And their training, in some cases. On that note, though…

“I fought some of these commoners earlier,” I noted idly. “They were well trained enough that I could believe they were ex-military. Have you had no issues with this?”

“I have,” Orchid grimaced. “This safe house ha...

15.6: Dakheng, Divided VI

“I’m going in,” I announced. “Don’t follow me.”

“I’m coming with you,” the kid who’d claimed to be a powerful oathholder said. “You said you were from Seb’s group, right?”

“I did,” I said. “Why?”

I didn’t need another person to join me. According to Jasmine, Orchid had been our enemy last night, even if he had seemed rather reluctant to play his part. Whether or not he truly held animosity for us, he would be an important person to connect...

15.5: Dakheng, Divided V

“Did you just do something?” Jasmine asked. “I felt a burst of oath energy from you.”

I had a white lie ready to go in an instant, but I paused with my mouth half-open, the falsehood not quite managing to make its way through my lips.

What had the entire damn crisis of the last few days been because of? It had been my unwillingness to share, my fear of everything good I’d built coming crashing down because of my identity. I had been lucky that my conversation with Jasmin...

15.4: Dakheng, Divided IV

Magic thrummed through my oath as I answered the call. Last time this had happened, my relocation had been sudden and completely unexpected, resulting from the collision of an enhanced mass of my magic with a bundle of the Clarsin primordial’s. That time, our meeting had been facilitated by Nishi’s manipulation of the primordial. More like a rope being tied around me and forcefully yanked.

This time, though, I could feel the rope being extended to me, offered rather than forced upon...

15.3: Dakheng, Divided III

The gunman was out of bullets, and the other two were downed. Not dead, because Jasmine had those silly little things called morals, but they weren’t going to bother us anytime soon.

Well, I had to reconsider that. I’d been telling myself it was just for Jasmine that I had been holding back, but this time it had felt different. Maybe it had been because we had just spent the night discussing the wrongs of my youth, the reminders of everything House Byron—and by extension, me—had...

15.2: Dakheng, Divided II

Crack-crack.

Another pair of shots landed almost immediately after the first, hitting from a different angle. Aimed at the window, I was pretty sure, but it stayed intact. It would take more than that to destroy a noble’s carriage.

“Shit,” Jasmine muttered. “I had not foreseen this level of resistance.”

I started forming magic in my hands, but Jasmine held a hand up.

“Not yet,” she advised. “I have a spell that might help us out here.”

...

15.1: Dakheng, Divided

Light was filtering through the window.

I woke quickly, blinking the eyes out of my sleep—uh, sleep out of my eyes. Okay, I might’ve been a little woozy, but it cleared away soon enough.

As I fully came awake, I realized that I was still lying down in the great hall’s couch.

Ah. That was right. When I’d been detailing the end of my illustrious career as a member of House Byron, I’d slipped too deep into my oath. I’d pulled hard, drawn deep, and the memories had b...

K.O: Kinslayer (Orchid) [END OF BOOK 2]

Orchid was having one hell of a night.

He hadn’t wanted to follow through with the plan. It had always been his father’s idea, the play to accuse some other nobles of treason and boost House Alzaq’s position. The plan had left a bad taste in Orchid’s mouth—it reeked of the plots and intrigue of the old world, the one that he had hoped he could one day leave behind.

Still, it hadn’t supposed to be like this. Nobody was supposed to have been hurt. Orchid had set it up sp...

K.10: Kinslayer X

“Peace, Lily,” the Crowned King said, his voice still tinged with concern. “Take your time. We must examine your senses first.”

“We’ve just removed a strong mental compulsion,” one of the oathholders—the woman—added, stepping away from me and stretching. “A loyalty effect, we believe. How long has it been there?”

“Ask not the girl,” said King Edward. “She likely knows not.”

“Whatever it was, it was powerful,” the other oathholder sa...

K.9: Kinslayer IX

Thirteen minutes. It only took thirteen minutes for Crowned King Edward to arrive. I had been counting the seconds up as an armored guard held my arms behind my back, doing my best to maintain the facade of a confused live-in who had wandered into an unexpected situation, and I was more than a little surprised when the man arrived so early.

Even at this hour, he was still partially in uniform. Not quite the full regalia that he wore to formal balls and parties, but enough that anyone lo...

K.8: Kinslayer VIII

It was night already, but the grounds of the royal castle were still well lit. It wouldn’t do to have gone so far, to have used so many resources and so many opportunities just to be discovered now.

The Crown nobles were a solid hundred meters ahead of me, making their way down the long paved path leading towards the royal castle proper. There was a lot of cover inside the walls, but the supermajority of that cover was comprised of the carefully manicured bushes and plants to the side...

K.7: Kinslayer VII

It was going to be a long ride to Dakheng. House Byron held dominion over the city of Amaka, a center of commerce for the kingdom, but it came with the downside of being over two hundred kilometers from Yaguan and almost that distance away from the seat of the Crown. Three or four hours away by oathmade carriage, I was pretty sure.

The driver of mine was silent, as they were always ordered to be. I had a lot of time to just observe the scenery, I supposed. That, and reflect on the event...

K.6: Kinslayer VI

“You just left him there like that?” Jasmine asked. “Not that I am judging you, but I am surprised you were able to do it so casually.”

“I attribute that to Lord Byron,” I said. “He taught me how to kill and how to divorce myself from the act. Jasper was my brother, but I rarely even saw him other than when we were at formal events. We happened to be related by blood, but that did not make us family.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Jasmine said, shifting i...

K.5: Kinslayer V

12 years ago

“Why are we doing this, again?” Jasper asked. “I thought we did enough damage to the leadership.”

For once, it hadn’t been me that asked. Lord Byron had insisted on taking Jasper and I along with him on his latest sojourn, and now the three of us were quietly cloaked under the effects of Lord Byron’s oath to—to Cyang, one of the sixty-four minor gods, the one that held domain over concealment. The lesson was fresh in my mind, one of the ...

K.4: Kinslayer IV

“As far back as then?” Jasmine asked. “A year and…”

“A year and a half before the biggest attempts, yeah,” I confirmed. “Nobility never connected the poisonings to House Byron?”

“The history books say it was one of the conflicting Houses,” Jasmine frowned. “Though I never did ask my parents about it.”

“Huh. I suppose Lord Byron did a better job at hiding it than I thought.”

“About that,” Jasmine said. “You’ve been mostly calling hi...

K.3: Kinslayer III

“I killed her, but that was just the start of it,” I explained, my voice devoid of emotion. It was a painful memory, but memories were just that. They had no hold over me anymore. “For the next few weeks, it was a new lesson every day or two. First it was the ones that we’d purchased from other families, then random commoners that we snatched off the streets, and then we started escalating.”

“Merciful gods,” Jasmine said. “You were eight years old?”

“J...

K.2: Kinslayer II

“And then the guards beat me up for a while,” I said. “Not much to describe there. Came out of it with a broken spine, a missing eye, and some other stuff that’s not important. Slightly worse injuries than usual. I’m getting to an important point, I swear. This is relevant.”

Jasmine blinked hard, like she’d just gone from a dark room into the bright midday sun. “Lily… first of all, that is genuinely horrible and I am deeply sorry that you were ever allowed to go throug...

K.1: Kinslayer

The night was growing colder outside, but the warmth and light of the Rayes manor’s great hall could almost make me forget about it.

Jasmine had dragged me here against my half-hearted protests. I’d been slipping in and out of sleep on our way here, and I’d barely processed what was in the hall before I had fully fallen asleep in a sinfully comfortable couch.

It had still been dark when I had woken up just a few minutes ago to the sound of footsteps in the hall. I’d seen J...

14.AA: Her Father's Daughter (Adventurers)

It had been ten full minutes since far too many people had arrived at the Alzaq manor and Kyle wasn’t sure what was happening anymore. He’d been introduced to far too many people tonight, and the allegiances were beginning to get fuzzy. In his mind, he’d already slipped into calling people by the names he might’ve assigned them during a stand-up act. To be fair, he’d been a little harried by the fact that there was apparently a free-for-all brawl going with an undetermined number of...

14.A: Her Father's Daughter (All)

Jasmine, Kyle, and Alex had just about finished securing the unconscious bodies of the two Alzaqs when Lukas arrived, rounding a corner at a jog.

He looked harried. The fabric of one of his uniform sleeves had been ripped to shreds, and from the blackened bits still clinging to his newly constructed arm, it looked like it had been burnt off. Lukas himself looked uninjured, if a little exhausted, and his arm was still glowing with magic.

“Lukas!” Alex exclaimed, rushing over to...

14.4: Her Father’s Daughter IV

Lord Alzaq stood a ways back from the fight, at least ten meters behind the oathholder that was furthest from me. Next to him stood one of the special armored oathholders that had accompanied him on his way out earlier. On a second glance at the soldier guarding the noble, I realized that the runic patterns on his black plate were significantly more complex than that of the ones I’d been fighting just now—much closer to Faye’s multipurpose behemoth of armor than the still lethally effic...

14.3: Her Father's Daughter III

Three stories to the ground. The manor was expansive, its size befitting the arrogant noble family occupying it, so each story was a solid six or seven meters high. Eighteen to twenty-one meters to the ground, much of which was paved over with brick. Enough to kill many an unprepared soldier.

I wasn’t just anybody, though, and I started casting even as I fell. A loose-frame shield formed behind me at an angle, travelling with me and redirecting my vertical fall into more of a slanted ...

14.J: Her Father's Daughter (Jasmine)

It had been a hectic night, and Jasmine was growing rather tired of it. Things had been going so well, too! The girl that occupied far too much of her headspace had seemed happy enough to be with her, and the two of them had had a truly blissful moment on the dance floor.

She’d known it wasn’t going to last. Going into this, she’d known that the Crown would be making their move, one that would likely upset the balance of the party, but she hadn’t expected someone else to interfe...

14.2: Her Father's Daughter II

“So you did know,” I snarled. “You tortured your captive enough, huh?”

“On the contrary,” Alzaq sneered, not even looking up from his desk, apparently engrossed in some old tome that I didn’t recognize. “I find torture to be a uniquely ineffective way to obtain information.”

“Surprisingly humane of you.” As I spoke, my eyes roved across the room, searching for the enemies that I knew were present here. I’d never had the element of surprise, so attacking rig...

14.1: Her Father's Daughter

I stood over Alto’s body, watching the light fade out of his eyes. Something that nobody ever tells you about opening someone’s throat is how messy it is. There was blood pooling under his head, flowing over the wooden floor, and I had to step back to keep myself from getting dirty. Alto gurgled and gagged, convulsing as his life faded away. It was a disturbing sound, but one I’d grown used to long ago. I knew that he would soil himself eventually once his bowels failed him in ...

13.7: The Royal Ball VII

“What did you just say?” I asked, my voice quiet but sharp.

“House Byron,” Alto repeated, stretching out the word. “Are you deaf? Must I repeat myself again?”

The cold hate from before was back, encompassing my entire mind before I could realize it. How could he know? Was it a lucky guess? Strike Team Leader Faye had said that a lot of people had learned that there was at least one surviving member of House Byron. Had the information leak really been that bad all those...

13.6: The Royal Ball VI

“In this very room,” Orchid said, his voice dangerously soft but still carrying throughout the massive room. “One of us is a fucking traitor.”

He was standing on top of a table, and though he looked a little ridiculous doing it, I couldn’t deny that he had presence as a speaker. Orchid had the room’s attention as he swept his eyes across the people gathered in the room. He took the time to look at everyone, sparing a glance for every noble, servant, and adventurer.<...

13.5: The Royal Ball V

“What the hell?” Alex said, half-shouting. “What is this?”

Almost immediately, shields manifested themselves at one door, an oily mixture of colors solidifying into translucent red and green after a moment.

The jester was in play, then.

At the other end of the room, though, nearer to the dance floor, nobles were scattering in panic and people were coming in unchecked. There wasn’t as many as a true massive mob would’ve had, perhaps twenty or twenty-five of them f...

13.4: The Royal Ball IV

We weren’t alone at the castle. A number of nobles had arrived before us, and there were still bound to be more behind. There was a small queue forming in front of the opened double doors, guards checking them in.

Well, “doors” was a bit of a misnomer. The entrance to the castle was more of an arch, its gates stretching maybe twenty or thirty meters high. It was partially open right now, leaving a gap wide enough for a carriage to travel through. There had to have been a team of p...

13.3: The Royal Ball III

Preparing for the ball had been more of an affair than I had thought it would be. I’d arrived earlier than I should’ve, slightly shaken from my run-in with the commoner mob, and even though it had been nearly three whole hours since my arrival we had still not finished my preparations.

There was an awful amount of preparation associated with making one presentable for a ball. Jasmine had made that abundantly clear after she’d bought the dress I’d wanted, the black piece that cam...