“The fuck?” was all Drake managed before the fish people attacked.
Or rather... a whole bunch of blue-skinned humanoids that were probably people. Who had flippers instead of feet. So fish people. Who also immediately started stabbing anyone nearby with silver spears, including all three blood thralls in Lord Blackmane’s box.
Two unarmed women and one armed man died quickly, throwing their bodies between fish people spears and their manor lord. The next person the fish people tried to stab after they literally fell out of the fucking sky was Lord Blackmane himself... who evaded them by tossing his blond blood thrall at the monsters. He then leapt over the wall of his box.
The shocked young woman got one spear through her stomach and another through her chest before she collapsed, stone dead, with the others. Meanwhile, Lord Blackmane sprinted for the doors as he ran his very stupid life. What an incomprehensible asshole!
Rather than shooting Lord Blackmane in the back, which was sorely tempting, Drake raised Magnum and pointed it at whatever the fuck these were. “Emily, go!”
His murdermaid charged the thrashing spear-wielding fish people with her glowing spectral axe. Since these fish people had appeared in Lord Blackmane’s box, that sandwiched the invaders between the entourages of Lord Gloomwood and Lord Ashwind. With Blackmane’s thralls all dead, the fish people were going to be Drake’s problem next if his people didn’t handle them right now.
As the first fish person leapt out of the box, Drake fired Magnum. That took the enemy down with a bolt through the chest. It wore a loin cloth and a bunch of beads on strings and had a little golden tiara on its head, but it had no armor. Good.
Drake took another enemy down with his next shot, which taught the rest to crouch inside the armored box... until Lord Ashwind’s giant blood thrall arrived.
One fish person immediately stabbed the big man in the chest with a spear, a stab the huge man entirely ignored. With a deafening roar, he sliced three blue-skinned warriors apart with a single swing of his axe. The fish people bled blue, and a lot of blue spattered the box in the wake of the big man’s axe. He didn’t even glance at the spear straight through his torso.
Two other fish people leapt out of the box on Drake’s side and then froze before he could shoot them. Each fell and shattered. Behind him, Valentia stepped to Drake’s side. Meanwhile, Emily finally reached the rest of the surviving and wildly milling fish people. They now had glowing shields of light in their hands, and those seemed solid enough to block strikes.
One of the blue-skinned humanoids bellowed something in an indecipherable language Drake had no hope of understanding. His fish people allies collapsed into a tight group in the center of the box, shields locked to ward off any attack. They now numbered six in all, and they’d formed a seemingly impenetrable phalanx.
A visibly undeterred Emily leapt over the wall of Lord Blackmane’s box, dodged past the slash of the nearest fish person, and swung her spectral battle axe. It first went through the light shields of the fish people and then through their flesh. The sounds they made as her spectral axe chopped their souls was the oddest, saddest sound Drake had ever heard, like a dolphin being clubbed to death underwater.
Four died.
The two that survived only did so by diving backward to avoid Emily’s soul-chopping slash. That put them in a perfect position to get curbstomped, shields and all, by the berserker giant thrall of Lord Ashwind, which he did. With his giant boots.
Once the huge man was done stomping the last two fish people into blue-colored fish people paste, he ripped the spear out of his torso and beat his chest with fists. He really was a berserker. Still, one soul chop from Emily would put him down if they got in a fight.
It was over. The... attack?... was over. And only then, as the shock and adrenaline and sheer what the fuck is this now began to fade, Drake remembered what these were called.
Kromians. These blue-skinned fish people were kromians. That’s what Zuri and Lydia had both called them, and that left only two questions in his mind. Had these kromians known they were going to be summoned into a kill-or-be-killed murderfest before they arrived?
And how, exactly, had Lord Redbow summoned them here?
As Drake turned to see Redbow still standing in his box with his five remaining blood thrall assassins arrayed around him in defensive positions, the man looked to Drake and offered the faintest hint of a wink. Nothing else. Nothing that would prove anything.
The doors all burst open at once. A deluge of capital guards in gleaming black ferrocite came sprinting into the room, brandishing long spears and big shields. There was more than a bit of shouting and confusion as Drake wisely cautioned his people to stay in their box.
Emily sauntered back, quite visibly pleased with herself. Why wouldn’t she be? She’d finally gotten to kill herself some assassins.
Still... the eyes of the pile of now dead kromians haphazardly strewn about Lord Blackmane’s box were as wide of those as his dead blood thralls. These didn’t look like trained assassins. Rather, they looked like a bunch of very surprised and now very dead fish people.
“Clint!” Sky hissed at his side. “Are you hurt?”
Drake glanced at her in surprise to find Sky, Kari, Karth, and Ali all now standing in his box with him, along with Valentia and Viktoria. Sky, in particular, was standing surprisingly close. That was nice, actually.
“What?” He frowned. “I’m fine. They’re all over there. This is why I carry a crossbow.”
“Guards!” The Judge bellowed in a voice that shook the entire room. “Secure these chambers! Lords! Remain in your boxes! No one is leaving until we secure the room!”
Drake abruptly sat down in his box. “I sure didn’t see that coming.” He glanced at Viktoria, whose gaze was even now sweeping the room. “Does this mean the cabal is over?”
Emily dropped on her ass beside him and punched him in the arm. “And just when it was getting interesting! I really want to find out who’s changing what people see.”
He glanced at her. “Nothing ever fazes you, does it?”
“I’m not entirely sure what that means, lord. But I’m going with a no.”
Valentia knelt at his other side. “Lord Blackmane is dead.”
“What?” Drake sat up straight. “No, he’s fine. He ran off? Right?”
“Gods.” Sky stared out of the box. “Was it the kromians? How did they manage to kill him all the way up there?”
Drake sat up just enough to look over the top of the box in the direction Sky was looking. He grimaced as his stomach sank. Lord Blackmane had fallen flat in front of the doors, atop the steps. The two capital guards kneeling beside him looked grim.
Lord Blackmane wasn’t moving. Not one bit.
“Fuck,” Drake whispered. “One of Redbow’s thralls left before the attack. Did he take down Lord Blackmane in all this? Was the fish people explosion a distraction?”
“I saw the man leave as well,” Viktoria agreed quietly. “If Kuzo is the thrall who left, we may be meeting the new lord of Blackmane Manor very soon.”
Drake glanced at her in alarm. “Who’s Kuzo?”
“Kuzo Turano is one of Lord Redbow’s most successful assassins,” Viktoria said. “The fact that he is now widely known is why he no longer takes many contracts. His rarity allows him to grab the heart of his target. If they move before he lets go, their heart ruptures.”
“Wow,” Drake said quietly. “Fuck that guy.”
As Drake glanced at Lord Blackmane again, and as he acknowledged the man was dead, he couldn’t feel too bad about it. Blackmane had tossed an eighteen-year-old girl at the kromians to save himself, and while Drake knew the reasons for it, logically—if a manor lord died, the whole manor and every blood thrall in it could be enslaved by a far more evil lord—it still bothered him that Lord Blackmane hadn’t even hesitated.
Drake glanced at his thralls to get their opinions. “Wouldn’t Blackmane’s silverweave protect him from magic heart grabbing guy? Like how it blocks Valentia’s flashfreeze?”
“It should have,” Viktoria said grimly. “All we have now is speculation. For the moment, I would suggest everyone remain alert. If kromians have somehow gained the ability to teleport right into the Temple of the Eidolons, they could pop up anywhere.”
“That shouldn’t be possible,” Kari said. “Not with the temple’s wards.”
This was the first time Drake could remember Sky’s blood thrall, the one with the my sword hits you very hard rarity, speaking since lunch. “Yeah? How do those work?”
Kari glanced at him, visibly annoyed, but then Sky cleared her throat and Kari suddenly got a lot more friendly. “The temple has magical wards around it created by the Eidolons themselves. They forbid hostile magic from entering or exiting the temple.”
“So what defines magic as hostile?” Drake asked. “Is teleporting hostile?”
“We don’t know that much about kromian magic,” Kari admitted. “I suppose it’s also possible that some sort of totem, fetish, or magical artifact was involved.”
“Like a magical artifact placed in Lord Blackmane’s box that summoned them?”
Kari shrugged. “Anything is possible, Lord Gloomwood. I don’t know how anyone could slip a magical item into a secured box in the Chamber of Council, but those kromians were certainly summoned here somehow.”
“Sure,” Drake agreed. “Sorry. Speculating about whatever magical bullshit is messing with me on a given day keeps me from freaking out any more than I have.”
Kari’s expression softened. “I forget you are not from our world. I see now why you might not know some of this, despite your position.”
“So you thought I was... what? Mocking your expertise?”
Kari looked away. “Let’s focus on remaining alert for more attacks.”
Right. Kari wasn’t his blood thrall, and he really didn’t care how she felt about him so long as she was ready to kill kromians. Assuming Emily didn’t kill them all first.
After a boring, grueling delay where an unseemly number of capital guards swept every bench and box in the room for anything out of the ordinary, the Judge finally spoke.
“The cabal is ended. Manor lords! You will be escorted to your chambers one by one, where an inquisitor will speak to you. You will not speak of the events of the cabal to anyone outside your manor. Lord Proudglade! You first.”
The cabal was ending after all... just like Lords Proudglade and Redbow had intended. This fish people attack had to be the doing of one or the other. Drake had no proof, and he couldn’t know exactly how either man had done it, but it made perfect sense.
Through this attack—however they had executed it—Proudglade and Redbow had stopped Lord Frostlight’s inquisition, which would have revealed whoever employed a thrall that could alter what people saw. They had also, in a two-for-one coup, assassinated Lord Blackmane, the only other manor lord Drake could trust for votes besides Lord Skybreak.
Finally, it would now be three months before anyone could call another cabal.
Drake knew what would happen with Blackmane Manor now. He thought he did. But he’d better check. “Did Lord Blackmane have a successor?”
“He did,” Viktoria said. “The last blood thrall he took to his bed before the one he brought with him today. She, however, killed herself shortly after lunch by jumping off the balcony.” Viktoria grimaced. “Or that is the story being told.”
“Fucking hell,” Drake whispered.
He hadn’t heard anything about this. But then again, since Lydia and Samuel would have been the ones who’d told him, and they’d both been on vacation today, it was unsurprising he was out of the loop. The “suicide” must have occurred after they ended their lunch.
Had this blood thrall killed herself because Lord Blackmane tossed her aside for the blond girl? Or had Lord Redbow or one of his assassins gotten to her first? Had they made it look like she’d tossed herself off a balcony in preparation for today’s attack?
“Does Blackmane have any other successors?” Drake asked.
If Lord Blackmane didn’t have another successor, and this Kuzo assassin guy working for Lord Redbow had killed him... that made Kuzo the new lord of Blackmane Manor. Which meant Lord Proudglade’s alliance of four manors had just hopped up to five.
“This speculation accomplishes little,” Viktoria reminded him. “You are up next.”
“Lord Gloomwood!” the Judge bellowed. “Now is your time to leave!”
As Emily waved at four very serious-looking capital guards who had just arrived at their box, Drake acknowledged Viktoria’s point. “Right, talk later. My chambers or yours?”
“You come to us,” Sky said. “For tonight.”
She meant they had to get in touch with Samuel and Lydia using her magic mirror. Now that the cabal was over, Drake could once more rely on the council of his steward and spymaster without worrying they would be called to testify that he could lie.
Setting aside all the people and fish people who’d died today, this cabal hadn’t gone half bad for Drake. In many ways, he’d actually won.
Go Team Gloomwood.
“The fuck?” was all Drake managed before the fish people attacked.
Or rather... a whole bunch of blue-skinned humanoids that were probably people. Who had flippers instead of feet. So fish people. Who also immediately started stabbing anyone nearby with silver spears, including all three blood thralls in Lord Blackmane’s box.
Two unarmed women and one armed man died quickly, throwing their bodies between fish people spears and their manor lord. The next person the fish people tried to stab after they literally fell out of the fucking sky was Lord Blackmane himself... who evaded them by tossing his blond blood thrall at the monsters. He then leapt over the wall of his box.
The shocked young woman got one spear through her stomach and another through her chest before she collapsed, stone dead, with the others. Meanwhile, Lord Blackmane sprinted for the doors as he ran his very stupid life. What an incomprehensible asshole!
Rather than shooting Lord Blackmane in the back, which was sorely tempting, Drake raised Magnum and pointed it at whatever the fuck these were. “Emily, go!”
His murdermaid charged the thrashing spear-wielding fish people with her glowing spectral axe. Since these fish people had appeared in Lord Blackmane’s box, that sandwiched the invaders between the entourages of Lord Gloomwood and Lord Ashwind. With Blackmane’s thralls all dead, the fish people were going to be Drake’s problem next if his people didn’t handle them right now.
As the first fish person leapt out of the box, Drake fired Magnum. That took the enemy down with a bolt through the chest. It wore a loin cloth and a bunch of beads on strings and had a little golden tiara on its head, but it had no armor. Good.
Drake took another enemy down with his next shot, which taught the rest to crouch inside the armored box... until Lord Ashwind’s giant blood thrall arrived.
One fish person immediately stabbed the big man in the chest with a spear, a stab the huge man entirely ignored. With a deafening roar, he sliced three blue-skinned warriors apart with a single swing of his axe. The fish people bled blue, and a lot of blue spattered the box in the wake of the big man’s axe. He didn’t even glance at the spear straight through his torso.
Two other fish people leapt out of the box on Drake’s side and then froze before he could shoot them. Each fell and shattered. Behind him, Valentia stepped to Drake’s side. Meanwhile, Emily finally reached the rest of the surviving and wildly milling fish people. They now had glowing shields of light in their hands, and those seemed solid enough to block strikes.
One of the blue-skinned humanoids bellowed something in an indecipherable language Drake had no hope of understanding. His fish people allies collapsed into a tight group in the center of the box, shields locked to ward off any attack. They now numbered six in all, and they’d formed a seemingly impenetrable phalanx.
A visibly undeterred Emily leapt over the wall of Lord Blackmane’s box, dodged past the slash of the nearest fish person, and swung her spectral battle axe. It first went through the light shields of the fish people and then through their flesh. The sounds they made as her spectral axe chopped their souls was the oddest, saddest sound Drake had ever heard, like a dolphin being clubbed to death underwater.
Four died.
The two that survived only did so by diving backward to avoid Emily’s soul-chopping slash. That put them in a perfect position to get curbstomped, shields and all, by the berserker giant thrall of Lord Ashwind, which he did. With his giant boots.
Once the huge man was done stomping the last two fish people into blue-colored fish people paste, he ripped the spear out of his torso and beat his chest with fists. He really was a berserker. Still, one soul chop from Emily would put him down if they got in a fight.
It was over. The... attack?... was over. And only then, as the shock and adrenaline and sheer what the fuck is this now began to fade, Drake remembered what these were called.
Kromians. These blue-skinned fish people were kromians. That’s what Zuri and Lydia had both called them, and that left only two questions in his mind. Had these kromians known they were going to be summoned into a kill-or-be-killed murderfest before they arrived?
And how, exactly, had Lord Redbow summoned them here?
As Drake turned to see Redbow still standing in his box with his five remaining blood thrall assassins arrayed around him in defensive positions, the man looked to Drake and offered the faintest hint of a wink. Nothing else. Nothing that would prove anything.
The doors all burst open at once. A deluge of capital guards in gleaming black ferrocite came sprinting into the room, brandishing long spears and big shields. There was more than a bit of shouting and confusion as Drake wisely cautioned his people to stay in their box.
Emily sauntered back, quite visibly pleased with herself. Why wouldn’t she be? She’d finally gotten to kill herself some assassins.
Still... the eyes of the pile of now dead kromians haphazardly strewn about Lord Blackmane’s box were as wide of those as his dead blood thralls. These didn’t look like trained assassins. Rather, they looked like a bunch of very surprised and now very dead fish people.
“Clint!” Sky hissed at his side. “Are you hurt?”
Drake glanced at her in surprise to find Sky, Kari, Karth, and Ali all now standing in his box with him, along with Valentia and Viktoria. Sky, in particular, was standing surprisingly close. That was nice, actually.
“What?” He frowned. “I’m fine. They’re all over there. This is why I carry a crossbow.”
“Guards!” The Judge bellowed in a voice that shook the entire room. “Secure these chambers! Lords! Remain in your boxes! No one is leaving until we secure the room!”
Drake abruptly sat down in his box. “I sure didn’t see that coming.” He glanced at Viktoria, whose gaze was even now sweeping the room. “Does this mean the cabal is over?”
Emily dropped on her ass beside him and punched him in the arm. “And just when it was getting interesting! I really want to find out who’s changing what people see.”
He glanced at her. “Nothing ever fazes you, does it?”
“I’m not entirely sure what that means, lord. But I’m going with a no.”
Valentia knelt at his other side. “Lord Blackmane is dead.”
“What?” Drake sat up straight. “No, he’s fine. He ran off? Right?”
“Gods.” Sky stared out of the box. “Was it the kromians? How did they manage to kill him all the way up there?”
Drake sat up just enough to look over the top of the box in the direction Sky was looking. He grimaced as his stomach sank. Lord Blackmane had fallen flat in front of the doors, atop the steps. The two capital guards kneeling beside him looked grim.
Lord Blackmane wasn’t moving. Not one bit.
“Fuck,” Drake whispered. “One of Redbow’s thralls left before the attack. Did he take down Lord Blackmane in all this? Was the fish people explosion a distraction?”
“I saw the man leave as well,” Viktoria agreed quietly. “If Kuzo is the thrall who left, we may be meeting the new lord of Blackmane Manor very soon.”
Drake glanced at her in alarm. “Who’s Kuzo?”
“Kuzo Turano is one of Lord Redbow’s most successful assassins,” Viktoria said. “The fact that he is now widely known is why he no longer takes many contracts. His rarity allows him to grab the heart of his target. If they move before he lets go, their heart ruptures.”
“Wow,” Drake said quietly. “Fuck that guy.”
As Drake glanced at Lord Blackmane again, and as he acknowledged the man was dead, he couldn’t feel too bad about it. Blackmane had tossed an eighteen-year-old girl at the kromians to save himself, and while Drake knew the reasons for it, logically—if a manor lord died, the whole manor and every blood thrall in it could be enslaved by a far more evil lord—it still bothered him that Lord Blackmane hadn’t even hesitated.
Drake glanced at his thralls to get their opinions. “Wouldn’t Blackmane’s silverweave protect him from magic heart grabbing guy? Like how it blocks Valentia’s flashfreeze?”
“It should have,” Viktoria said grimly. “All we have now is speculation. For the moment, I would suggest everyone remain alert. If kromians have somehow gained the ability to teleport right into the Temple of the Eidolons, they could pop up anywhere.”
“That shouldn’t be possible,” Kari said. “Not with the temple’s wards.”
This was the first time Drake could remember Sky’s blood thrall, the one with the my sword hits you very hard rarity, speaking since lunch. “Yeah? How do those work?”
Kari glanced at him, visibly annoyed, but then Sky cleared her throat and Kari suddenly got a lot more friendly. “The temple has magical wards around it created by the Eidolons themselves. They forbid hostile magic from entering or exiting the temple.”
“So what defines magic as hostile?” Drake asked. “Is teleporting hostile?”
“We don’t know that much about kromian magic,” Kari admitted. “I suppose it’s also possible that some sort of totem, fetish, or magical artifact was involved.”
“Like a magical artifact placed in Lord Blackmane’s box that summoned them?”
Kari shrugged. “Anything is possible, Lord Gloomwood. I don’t know how anyone could slip a magical item into a secured box in the Chamber of Council, but those kromians were certainly summoned here somehow.”
“Sure,” Drake agreed. “Sorry. Speculating about whatever magical bullshit is messing with me on a given day keeps me from freaking out any more than I have.”
Kari’s expression softened. “I forget you are not from our world. I see now why you might not know some of this, despite your position.”
“So you thought I was... what? Mocking your expertise?”
Kari looked away. “Let’s focus on remaining alert for more attacks.”
Right. Kari wasn’t his blood thrall, and he really didn’t care how she felt about him so long as she was ready to kill kromians. Assuming Emily didn’t kill them all first.
After a boring, grueling delay where an unseemly number of capital guards swept every bench and box in the room for anything out of the ordinary, the Judge finally spoke.
“The cabal is ended. Manor lords! You will be escorted to your chambers one by one, where an inquisitor will speak to you. You will not speak of the events of the cabal to anyone outside your manor. Lord Proudglade! You first.”
The cabal was ending after all... just like Lords Proudglade and Redbow had intended. This fish people attack had to be the doing of one or the other. Drake had no proof, and he couldn’t know exactly how either man had done it, but it made perfect sense.
Through this attack—however they had executed it—Proudglade and Redbow had stopped Lord Frostlight’s inquisition, which would have revealed whoever employed a thrall that could alter what people saw. They had also, in a two-for-one coup, assassinated Lord Blackmane, the only other manor lord Drake could trust for votes besides Lord Skybreak.
Finally, it would now be three months before anyone could call another cabal.
Drake knew what would happen with Blackmane Manor now. He thought he did. But he’d better check. “Did Lord Blackmane have a successor?”
“He did,” Viktoria said. “The last blood thrall he took to his bed before the one he brought with him today. She, however, killed herself shortly after lunch by jumping off the balcony.” Viktoria grimaced. “Or that is the story being told.”
“Fucking hell,” Drake whispered.
He hadn’t heard anything about this. But then again, since Lydia and Samuel would have been the ones who’d told him, and they’d both been on vacation today, it was unsurprising he was out of the loop. The “suicide” must have occurred after they ended their lunch.
Had this blood thrall killed herself because Lord Blackmane tossed her aside for the blond girl? Or had Lord Redbow or one of his assassins gotten to her first? Had they made it look like she’d tossed herself off a balcony in preparation for today’s attack?
“Does Blackmane have any other successors?” Drake asked.
If Lord Blackmane didn’t have another successor, and this Kuzo assassin guy working for Lord Redbow had killed him... that made Kuzo the new lord of Blackmane Manor. Which meant Lord Proudglade’s alliance of four manors had just hopped up to five.
“This speculation accomplishes little,” Viktoria reminded him. “You are up next.”
“Lord Gloomwood!” the Judge bellowed. “Now is your time to leave!”
As Emily waved at four very serious-looking capital guards who had just arrived at their box, Drake acknowledged Viktoria’s point. “Right, talk later. My chambers or yours?”
“You come to us,” Sky said. “For tonight.”
She meant they had to get in touch with Samuel and Lydia using her magic mirror. Now that the cabal was over, Drake could once more rely on the council of his steward and spymaster without worrying they would be called to testify that he could lie.
Setting aside all the people and fish people who’d died today, this cabal hadn’t gone half bad for Drake. In many ways, he’d actually won.
Go Team Gloomwood.
