Spells flashed and crackled up and down the street as mages clashed against the compound’s extensive wards. According to their blueprints, the inn had only civilian grade magical defenses, but the martyrs had wisely placed little trust in those documents. The Ikeda Estates was an old Ashadi landmark rebuilt in the heart of the occupation. By its very nature, it was a sign of defiance—one playing host to a gathering of murderers.
It would have been more surprising if the owners weren’t in collusion with their guests.
Alarion’s first blow cracked the front gate on impact, but failed to fully dislodge it as he expected. His second strike, empowered by a freshly cast [Bolster Strength]—one of his new spells that increased STR by 20% for ten minutes at a slight cost to his other attributes—was enough to send the magically reinforced gate spiraling off its hinges.
The tumbling slab of wood narrowly missed a man inside. His prim appearance and traditional Ashadi robes marked him as the proprietor, while the stunned look on the man’s face told Alarion everything he needed to know.
They’d caught them unawares.
“238th Auxilia,” Alarion announced. “This is a search, get down on the ground.”
The man turned and ran.
Alarion was on him in a heartbeat. Too fast, actually. He felt something snap; the man screaming in agony as Alarion forced him to the ground. It had been too long since Alarion had last spent time with the unawakened. They were more fragile than he remembered.
“I told you not to move,” Alarion growled. He used [Observation] to confirm the man’s unawakened status, then reached for a mundane cuff on his belt.
“I have him, Sir,” an unfamiliar woman said as she took hold of the innkeeper’s arms.
“Mm,” Alarion nodded in thanks, though he was beginning to understand why Kali hated being called ‘Sir’. It felt wrong. The woman was one of the dozens of weaker rank II recruits whose name—or even face—he had yet to learn. She also had at least a decade on him.
In any sane world, she’d be the one in charge of him.
Then again, in a sane world neither of them would be Auxilia.
He stood and eyed the teams of Awakened flooding into the courtyard behind him. Some were rear-line units, meant to hold the exits, wrangle the prisoners. Others were were frontline squads like his own; mixed units of healers, mages and frontline fighters intended to bring the fight to the traitors.
Alarion’s unit—comprised of Bergman, Witch, Archer and Kali— were the heavy hitters. Their job was to break any attempt at resistance before it formed, and to find Centre before he could escape.. They knew Alarion could catch up, which made it strange to see them milling about.
“Are you waiting on me?” he asked.
“The finger wigglers are having trouble,” Kali explained.
Rather than try to get more information from Kali—which would be a total lost cause for any magical roadblock— Alarion focused outward with [Unraveller’s Sense]. It only took seconds for him to understand the extent of the issue.
Inside the walls, the threads of mana and sympathy were twisted and tangled into such unnatural patterns that it was difficult to follow even familiar threads. Given that their plan relied on [Sympathetic Sight] and similar tracking skills to identify the most important individuals, this would be a problem.
“Our backup?” Bergman asked, abandoning his attempt at making sense of the corrupted sympathy surrounding them.
“I am having a similar issue, young master Ivor,” said ZEKE, his [Conspiratorial Whisper] audible only to Alarion, Ivor and Kali. “Whatever is responsible for the disruption is also blurring my other senses past a few dozen yards. It is like the air itself is vibrating.”
“Blurry?” Alarion repeated.
“But not blind,” ZEKE confirmed, before he began feeding Alarion information on the largest clusters of individuals within his diminished range.
Alarion pointed to the three other advanced squads tasked with attacking through the south entrance, directing each down a path. “Five buildings up. Six up and two to the north. East wall. Go.” Alarion ignored their shouts of confirmation and turned his eyes north. “Biggest concentration is that way.”
“T-They’ll know we are here.”
An explosion from the north entrance punctuated Bergman’s statement, as did Witch’s laughter and mocking reply. “You think!?”
As suggested by its name, the Ikeda Estates was more than just a single building. It had started that way centuries ago—back in the Old City—but the development of Ashad-Vitri had provided a financial boon that had allowed the Ikeda family to purchase more and more property in the burgeoning merchant quarter. Soon enough, the rebuilt ‘Ikeda Inn’ was a district unto itself.
It was a lot of ground to cover for the 238th alone, but they would have help. While the Vitrian regulars could not intervene, the local Auxilia were already mobilizing as the fighting intensified. They’d been kept out of the loop for reasons of secrecy, but now that the attack had begun they would be quick to reinforce.
It was only a matter of time before the noose closed around the traitors’ necks. And they knew it. The only question was how many people they could take with them.
A nightmarish scene greeted Alarion’s squad as they turned the corner into a northbound lane. One of the narrow veins that threaded between outbuildings and gardens, it had been a place of quiet beauty only minutes earlier. Now flames licked up the wooden columns of two nearby buildings, their roofs sagging inward as tiles popped and spat from the heat. Smoke rolled low across the ground, stinging Alarion’s eyes as he squinted to make out the shapes moving ahead of him.
And the ones that weren’t.
One of the martyrs was dead or dying. He was face down at the side of the path, his life draining out of him from half a dozen wounds. He was a second-line skirmisher, one of the men sent to rush ahead to try and disrupt the enemy before they could gather. The soldier was no one powerful, but far from weak.
The men who killed him were not far ahead, three young thugs working together to box in another victim.
“Akairos’s Bone Break!” Witch shouted without a moment’s hesitation. She flicked a thin wand toward the closest attacker, and Alarion heard glass snap between Witch’s fingers, followed by the crunch of bone ahead of him.
The traitor didn’t even realize what had happened. One second, his arm was raised for a slash—the next, it wasn’t really an arm anymore. The pulped limb fell limp at his side, the man collapsing to one knee, his mouth open in a panicked, high-pitched scream.
The other two hesitated, and that was all their would-be victim needed.
The cornered Auxilia—bleeding, staggered, disarmed, but still very much alive—lunged forward with the resolve of a dead man. He ducked beneath the nearest thug’s panicked thrust, seized the broken-armed attacker by the collar, and dragged him forward as a makeshift shield.
It was just enough. Seditious steel stole the life from its own kin, puncturing through the wounded man’s neck rather than the martyr’s heart as its owner intended. Undeterred, the murderer wrenched the knife free for another try, but by then it was far too late.
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Alarion killed the attacker with a glancing blow at the very tip of his reach. One of Isha’s sharp edges caught the traitor at the back of his jaw, and momentum—along with a startling disparity in level and Attributes—did the rest. The man pirouetted twice on the spot from the impact, though he was dead long before his jawless body slumped into the dirt.
Kali was kinder to his target. For a certain definition of kind. Smart enough to flee, but not smart enough to surrender. Kali’s brutal suplex left him broken but very much alive.
Whether he wanted to be was another question entirely.
“T-T-Thank you,” the man gasped, his whole body shaking from wounds, stress, and exertion. Standing a head taller than Alarion, with the thick corded shoulders of someone who had made an honest living before his induction, the survivor looked far more like a soldier than Alarion ever would. “You saved my life.”
“She did,” Alarion said, effortlessly helping the man to a nearby wall before his legs could give out. “What was that? Your file said nothing about you being able to cripple limbs at a distance.”
She scoffed, fishing in her pouch to hand the wounded soldier a fresh healing potion. “I wish. Take a look.”
Alarion followed her gesture and saw that, sure enough, the dead man’s once brutalized arm was now fully intact—though the same could not be said for the gaping hole his ally had made of his neck.
“Y-You need to get better at seeing through illusions, Alarion,” Bergman scowled. “That shouldn’t have f-fooled you.”
“What is your name?” Alarion asked the wounded man while ignoring the jibe. Mental resistance training was on Alarion’s to-do list, but it was a very long list.
“Caleb, Sir.”
“Caleb,” Alarion repeated, committing the man’s face and name to memory. “When you’re ready, follow the path back and send a team to collect what is left of this one. If you spot a hostile, go to ground. I expect to see you at muster when this is over. Am I understood?”
“Yes, Vaelde.”
Alarion sighed, then clapped the larger man on the shoulder. “Good man. The rest of you, move.”
The scene repeated itself a few minutes later when their group came across another splinter group, though this time to a less wholesome ending. They wiped the floor with their enemy, but even killing them twice over wouldn’t have saved the lives of Alarion’s wounded.
The Bones were losing, but they were making the martyrs pay for each victory. And in far too many places at once. Even the other assault units were heavily engaged.
“How many have we brought down so far?” Alarion asked, a fingertip pressed to his ear to drown out the sound of combat nearby.
Various squads chimed in one after another over, with Bergman quickly totalling up their numbers. “Thirty-two captures and at least twice that many dead.”
Alarion cussed under his breath. No more than fifty hostiles, Williams had told them. They had nearly that many in custody, with more on the way. It was no wonder the Bones were doing so much damage; the 238th was probably outnumbered.
“All martyrs, close ranks. Five to a squad, no splitting off. We have them boxed in, we can afford to run them down-“
“Belay that,” Williams’ voice interrupted. “You will proceed as ordered until True Heart is in-“
“Contact!” a third voice cut in. “We have eyes on three men matching the description of Cent… I mean True Heart.”
“Where?” Alarion and Williams demanded in unison.
Alarion set off at a sprint the moment he heard the directions, ignoring his own orders while trusting Kali to keep his more fragile companions safe until they caught up with him. Echo flew freely over a rooftop, and he flickered up to it, peering out across the battle-ravaged compound.
Alarion saw the crimson flare lingering overhead and swore. He could barely be any further from his target while still in the compound.
Worse yet, he could see his soldiers fighting down below. Two martyrs were flanking an injured man with a broken sword in a nearby garden. A street away, half a dozen Auxilia were fighting for their lives against a force twice their number. They’d formed a defensive knot with a burning building covering one flank, shielding themselves against encirclement by a knife-wielding mob. In the distance, three men chased a wounded martyr. Dia, if memory served. They were gaining on her.
And those were just the ones he saw.
The fact that most of the seditionists were armed with nothing heavier than knives and magic spoke to just how badly they’d been caught unaware, and just how much of a threat they posed. At the same time however, it was hard to ignore the zealous ferocity with which they fought. Or how badly fragmented his own forces had become in such a short time.
Such was the danger of sending the 238th in the first place. His soldiers could barely recognize one another, let alone fight as cohesive, unified groups.
In the end, it was one unorganized mob fighting another. The 238th would win; that much seemed a certainty from this vantage. The question remained: how many would they lose in the process?
How many would he lose?
Alarion took a deep breath of the cool night air, picked his target, and sent Echo flying.
He appeared behind the shocked mob, judged his distance, and retreated two steps before chanting, “Empowered Solar Burst.”
You have slain [Human – UCL 29]
You have slain [Human – UCL 38]
You have slain [Human – UCL 0]
The man nearest him—the unawakened one if Alarion had to guess—evaporated. The next two were burned beyond recognition, their bodies pulped by the detonation that followed. Three more fell screaming, but they would live. Only the ones at the far end of the encirclement, outside of the range of Alarion’s spell, remained unharmed.
Alarion picked the three on the left and laid into them with unyielding ferocity. A parry from Isha shattered an incoming knife, as well as the hand that held it, while a riposte from Echo opened a stranger from neck to groin.
You have slain [Human – UCL 29]
You have slain [Human – UCL 18]
It shouldn’t be so easy to take human life. Or even Awakened life. These men were weak by any standard and pathetic by Alarion’s. But he didn’t have the luxury of taking them alive, of waiting around, or even chasing the remaining coward as he turned and fled.
Alarion glanced back to see his men already on the offensive against the remaining traitors. What had been twelve against six was now three against six. His men could handle it.
A few seconds and three teleports later, Alarion took a knife to the gut. Not by preference, obviously, but still by choice. He’d taken too long saving the last group, and underestimated how long it’d take the second group to catch Dia. No tool in Alarion’s arsenal could stop a falling blade, not without risk to his ally.
So Alarion put himself in the way.
“Ngh,” Alarion grunted as he clasped his attacker’s wrist like a vice. Better to keep the knife inside than to give the man a chance to shiv him a few times and compound the damage.
They were too close for blade work, let alone trying to use Isha. Solar Burst was out of the question with an ally literally pressed against his back.
Fists it was.
Alarion dropped Isha and hit the man who’d stabbed him, picking him first for purely practical reasons. The hook sent the middle aged rebel careening to one side, and the follow-up uppercut sent him sprawling into the land of wind and ghosts. Sadly, his friends recovered from their shock faster than expected, their blades flashing in the moonlight as they carved nasty lines across his forearms.
One man, the dual wielder on the left, slipped a blade around Alarion’s guard and deep into his shoulder. The grin on the bastard’s face faltered when Alarion failed to so much as scream.
Alarion had never considered using [Reject the Pain] as a demoralizing tactic, but if it worked, it worked.
He fought with the last two longer than he would have liked, even if that time was only measured in seconds—but when the tides turned against his enemies, they turned quickly. A few jabs opened enough space for Alarion to pivot to the left. His enemies followed him, and Alarion activated his [Hilt Wrap of the Lost and Forgotten], causing the red fabric to grow taut just behind their ankles. One saw the danger and carefully skipped over the hazard as Alarion went on the offensive; the other did not, and ended up flat on his back with Dia’s sword soon thrust through his neck.
The last man standing wisely surrendered. That was its own sort of trouble, forcing Alarion to linger while both survivors were fitted with skill cuffs.
At least it gave him time to heal.
On and on it went as he closed in on his true target. Some fights were so one-sided that Alarion ignored them; others were desperate enough that he spent up to half a minute intervening on their behalf. For most, he vanished as quickly as he arrived, teleporting in to stab, slash or bludgeon, then vanishing as though he were never there at all.
Alarion saw a soldier die before he could help him, and another was grievously wounded when Alarion was forced to intervene elsewhere. And these were far from the only conflicts. There were surely others concealed by dark curtains of smoke; desperate battles that he’d missed entirely. Alarion didn’t even have the time to feel guilty about those.
“I am above the target. Where are they?” Alarion asked, to no reply.
Then he saw them down below. Not his target, but three bodies. Three Auxilia.
Flickering down to survey the damage, it was readily apparent that this wasn’t the work of a mob. They’d been brutally mutilated, each missing at least one limb. Some had their heads split open, others their torsos pulverized by something heavy. It looked like the aftermath of one of Alarion’s fights, actually. Which meant a powerful Awakened.
Alarion sent Echo flying and scanned the ground below him. Whoever was responsible, they couldn’t have gotten far. “ZEKE?”
“I am looking!” ZEKE reassured him. For a moment, nothing, then he added, “Your eight o’clock. They tore a hole in the wall. They’re outside.”
Escaping the confines of Ikeda worked against them. Two teleports took Alarion outside the bound field of whatever spell was tampering with ZEKE’s vision, and the machine found them within moments. They’d made it less than half a mile.
The Imperial Greatsword slammed into the ground in front of the fleeing quartet, and Alarion teleported down to it, a self-satisfied grin on his face. The 238th had already paid a high price, but he’d found what they bought.
“Going somewhere?”