Foxtails and Fairytales: Facades and Fables of the Phantom Prince

[Arc 18] Ch.3 Wicked Princes

*

[Sebas]

With a bit of magic instruction, I programmed the dragon construct to crash into a nearby lake and dispel itself. It wasn't a perfect spell so the magic efficiency was garbo so it won't have lasted long anyway. Maybe one battle with some uber enemy... maybe...

It's a spell that is going to need some tweaking but this experience has been very valuable. I know it's strong parts and weak points, and know I have some idea on how to solve the magic efficiency during the spell casting.

But I will worry about that stuff more later, right now we have an opportunity for more mischief.

I mean... we have time to get more missions done.

I downed some mana potion and a supplement. Once the vertigo stopped, I transformed everyone's clothes again. Luckily, since I wasn't changing anyone's faces it wasn't as taxing.

I snapped the teleport scroll from inside the dragon so we couldn't be tracked as easily, and we appeared on the roof of a warehouse in a shipyard.

"Well, that was exciting?" Flint said as he dusted himself off. "So where do we go from here?"

I pulled out the paperwork that had a map of the warehouses and oriented myself with my surrounding.

"It looks like it is that one." I pointed. "We will go inside. Make sure it is the right place, show Raven it is a lair of abomination and wickedness, free any would-be innocents, kill any baddies, then we blow the place up." I turned to everyone, "everyone got it?"

*

No one in our group was a slacker so the mission went over easily.

The guards were pathetically drunk, and Raven insisted that we merely not kill them. So we left it to her to move the bodies after we knocked them unconscious. After there was no one in the workspace we planted some bombs that matched human-made time bombs that one of the brothers was working on.

This was information I was privy to these inventions thanks to Daylan who is always fiddling with stuff. This time around, he was finding stuff in scrap bins and stumbled into the second prince's bomb workshop.

Daylen isn't someone who would get caught easily, so he nabbed a bunch to take apart, reproduce, and make better.

Before we left on this adventure I stopped by where Daylen was staying in Elkwood and unburied him from his work to get what information I could out of him. When he mentioned explosives, I procured enough to knock down a castle tower. And then gave him enough money to buy a fortress so that he didn't blow up the locals with his experiments. Such is our relationship, I fund his research and don't knock down his self-esteem, and he provides all sorts of James-bond style goodies.

This time around these timed explosives were uncommon enough in this world that only a small percentage of people were developing this sort of analog tech that wasn't based around existing magic tech. If I used this tech to blow up the third brother's factory, then he could only point fingers at the second brother.

Thanks to those bombs, we were able to eliminate the factory without any complications.

But complications did come up when we told raven we wouldn't be returning to Elkwood.

"Unacceptable! Would it not be simple to teleport back to Elkwood? And rest there?" Raven asked obstinately.

Unanimously, we all looked at her like she was crazy.

"Okay okay, I got this one." Flint said, while the rest of us got settled in the large adventurer's party suite of a local inn a town away from the dockyard we just blew up.

Flint placed one condescending hand on Raven's shoulder... which was promptly swiped away. "Do you want the long answer or the truth?"

"The Truth, you ignorant savage!" Raven shouted.

"Yes." Flint said one word and gave her a shit eating grin. But he didn't say anything else.

"So why don't we?" she growled.

"Well, that's the long answer." he shrugged as if it couldn't be helped.

"What is the long answer?"

"You didn't want the long answer, you wanted the truth."

Raven pouted and a vein bulged on her forehead.

"Flint, stop teasing her." Nerinin yawned.

"The long answer is that it would be very easy to return but much harder to leave to complete the last task. Vance is already covering for us being gone... those of us who ditched responsibility anyway." Flint teased and poked Raven's puffed cheek. "So if we returned now it would be easy for us but hard on Vance. Especially, if we just up and left again after that. So we need to utilize the time we have been given to be away."

"And how much time has been bequeathed to thy wickedness?" Raven asked while grinding her teeth.

"When she says it like that it makes me want to actually commit a heist or something." I snickered.

"You DID pull a heist, you stole a whole casino. I thought you were smart." Liz jabbed.

"I'd say a week, easy. Two weeks if we get caught up in something." Flint answered.

"A FORTNIGHT!" Raven panicked while grabbing on to Flint's shirt. "Vance left thee to plot and scheme for a fortnight!"

"You realize that I am the Prince of Pirates? I've been unsupervised and pillaging my weasley black guts out nearly my entire life, savvy?" Flint snickered wickedly.

Raven let go as if she had been punched in the stomach. Then she turned to me. "And you call this criminal your friend?" as if she was looking for some kind of lifeline.

"I'm the Phantom Prince, love." I swiped my hand over my face and used foxfire to manifest a kitsune mask. Then from dramatic effect I tilted my head back and lift it just enough to reveal part of my face. "I'm on the run from three kingdoms. In no small part to arrogantly insulting the kings of those kingdoms and daring them to 'F' around and find out. Or did you miss the elite task force that has been after my tails?"

"Fluffy fluff." Talisa was sleepy and already burying her face in my tails since I didn't need to use a disguise here.

I fell back into the double bed that Nerinin had taken charge of pushing together. I curled on one side with Nerinin while Talisa and Liz curled into my tails on the other side.

"How Immoral. I am in a den of harlots and iniquity." Raven said.

But I wasn't about to let her diss my girls. With a flick of my wrist I threw one of my battle staves in wand form at her like a kunai. "Say what you will about me, but I won't tolerate disrespect towards my precious ones."

Raven clicked her tongue. "Apologies."

"You can sleep with me if you want, I don't have fox tails, but I've been told I'm a good cuddler anyway." Flint offered.

"Hmph." Raven realized she wasn't going to get anywhere and turned her nose up at Flint and chose the bed in the opposite corner of the room. She very clearly set up a ward that was basically a minefield so that nobody would bother her while she rested.

"You're so cold, Raven. You need to loosen up more, that stiffness is going to be the end of you someday." Flint said as he jumped and landed in a separate bed.

Raven shot him a dirty look with enough venom to kill a stone dragon and perched in the corner of her bed while holding onto her sword like a samurai waiting for an ambush.

And on that note, we all slept in relative peace.