(1)
Roran started his day as he started most, with breakfast and tea. Then he polished his sword, donned the shimmering robes Vassilian had given him, and headed out for the day. His days had been busy lately. While his primary duty was still guarding Prince Vassilian, he was now dragged into meetings and briefings whenever he visited Sanctuary Tasos. Pelkha was pushing him constantly to be more involved with deciphering intelligence reports and planning responses to the increased number of infiltrators within the city.
Roran, overall, hadn't been too worried about the infiltrators. Partially because he'd been distracted by Kell's bout and their subsequent invasion of the King's archives, and partially because he had trouble fathoming what the infiltrators could do.
The King's Army was contained within the Armory, an arena in King Balaki's section of the city, and the docks that housed the floating ships that circled the city. They were well staffed with etched soldiers and compartmentalized. Attacking the King's Army would be a costly endeavor. Outside of the Army the only other targets were Kings themselves, which didn't warrant any concern, and the civilian population, which was a pointless endeavor in cruelty that Roran discounted as improbable at best.
His biggest concerns were in assassination attempts of political figures—such as Darling and Prince Vassilian—and potential supply chain interruptions. The infiltrators had been slowly stealing blasting powder, a resource needed for mining fairy rock out of the mountains. There were also reports of fairy rock itself going missing. Not enough to affect the empire's bottom line, but enough that it showed up in the manifests. There were reports of strange activities within the Crucible, but Roran didn't think they were connected. The Crucible was a strange place and there was little of value there.
Roran was lost in these thoughts when he boarded the elevator and began the ride up to the inner confines of Sanctuary Tasos. Sarah gave him a quick squeeze on the shoulder before barricading herself within his shadow, hiding from the copious layers of etchings designed to keep creatures like her out.
As soon as the elevator doors opened, Pelkha was there waiting for him, a ledger in hand and her brow furrowed into deep ridges. She looked like she had a headache and that Roran was about to add to it.
"Were you waiting for me?" Roran asked.
"I saw you walking up the street," Pelkha said. "I wanted to talk to you about your theory in the last meeting."
"Theory?"
"About political assets being prime targets. I think you are onto something. Ever since the Queen's Ball, we've noticed an uptick in saboteur activities. This correlates directly with the number of nobles and ambassadors visiting the city. I've decided to take your advice and increase security around them until they leave. Thankfully, they should be heading home by the end of the week."
"That's good to hear. Any new developments around the missing fairy rock?"
Pelkha shrugged. "Nobody is worried about a few tonnes of missing rock. The most harm they could do with it is power a ship or two. I'm more concerned with assigning soldiers to prime assassination targets. That reminds me, I've assigned Orlas to Lady Darlinea."
"Is that necessary? She's already guarded by Kell."
Pelkha raised her eyebrows at Roran. She shifted her stance, propping her hip against the wall. Roran half expected her to roll her eyes.
"The Living Storm is a fine Champion," said Pelkha. "But she's just that, a Champion. You lot are wonderful fighters, but you're not obedient soldiers, as you've so gracelessly reminded me in recent days."
Roran's ears started to burn as he flushed.
"I have no doubt that Kell will protect Lady Cataegis," Pelkha went on. "But only when she's around. And I doubt she wants to be around her sister at all times. Which reminds me, when were you going to share that little fact with us?"
Roran let out an awkward laugh. "I thought it would be obvious. Darlinea Cataegis, Kellsinora Cataegis...besides, they look just like each other."
Pelkha glared at Roran, her eyes pinning him in place. "One of these days, I will teach you how to lie. But until then, please be more forthcoming with pertinent information."
Roran tried to think of a neutral response, one that wouldn't give away that he was sitting on a mountain of pertinent information, and decided that the safest course of action was to shut his mouth.
When he didn't say anything, Pelkha went on. "We have a meeting with my primary shadow clerks and my accountants. We'll be discussing how many goods were stolen within the last five days. After that, there will be another meeting with the Field Captains. I'll be informing them of your upcoming promotion. We'll have a brief respite, then I'll introduce you to some of the Champions you'll be working with moving forward. They'll be your direct reports, so it's important you make a good first impression."
"Sounds like we have a busy day," said Roran.
"That's just this morning's itinerary. The afternoon is just as eventful. I hope you didn't have plans today."
With Pelkha dragging him along, Roran spent his morning, afternoon, and early evening attending meetings, digesting information reports, and vetting Champions that he may or may not be working with. Despite being a Champion, capable of inhuman feats, Roran was exhausted after a day of administrative legwork. Pelkha hadn't even allowed them a lunch break, having servants bring them food in the middle of a meeting so they could keep going.
By the time the sun was beginning to cast long shadows on the city, Roran's feet hurt and he never wanted to see another report again in his life. He would rather have climbed the entire distance from the Lower Crags back to the top of Usov's Keep, than have to sit through another meeting reading reports.
"I have to report to King Tasos," Pelkha said, seemingly unaffected by the day's wear and tear. "You're welcome to go home."
"I'll probably spend some time with Vass," Roran said, then flushing as Pelkha gave him a stern look.
"That's your prerogative. All I ask is that you try being discreet."
Channeling his inner Kell, Roran said, "No promises," and winked at her.
She glared at him as he headed down the hallway towards the stairs that would take him up to the Prince. He breezed up the steps suddenly energized now that the hard stuff was out of the way and he could relax.
He'd enjoyed spending time with the Prince more and more. He still hadn't provided Vassilian with a proper response after their conversation at the Queen's Ball, but he enjoyed the Prince's company and was delighted by his smile whenever he arrived in the mornings.
"Vass?" Roran called.
"I'm here," Vassilian called back.
He emerged from behind one of the curtain partitions that separated the floor into living spaces. The Prince wore only a simple cloth around his waist and plain sandals on his feet. With his gentle brown eyes and the fine features of his face, he looked like a younger, more elegant, version of his father. The smile he gave Roran was more dazzling than any of the jewelry he'd ever worn.
"Hey," Roran said, unsure of what else to add.
"Hey," said the Prince, his eyes dancing with amusement. He was a much better conversationalist than Roran and enjoyed teasing Roran about his lack of social skills.
Instead of trying to come up with a pithy comment, Roran wrapped an arm around the Prince's shoulders and pulled him into a hug, planting a kiss on his forehead. Vassilian blushed bright pink and turned his head slightly, avoiding Roran's gaze. Despite being the son of a god, the Prince was still affected by simple flirting and affection.
"Sarah sends her regards," Roran said, "and that she looks forward to when she can speak with you next."
"And I her. Can she hear me now?"
Roran nodded, slightly concerned at the sparkle in Vassilian's eye.
"We need to catch up," Vassilian said, speaking over Roran's shoulder. "I have so much I want to ask you."
Roran felt three taps against his shoulder, the signal for understood.
"She can't wait," Roran said, the hesitance only slightly audible in his voice.
Vassilian grinned up at him. Between Sarah and Vassilian, Roran was starting to feel like he was being ganged up on.
"So, did you have anything planned for the evening?" Roran asked.
"Nothing specific," said Vassilian. "I thought we could relax. I'd love to hear more stories. At least one, anyways."
"I can tell you as many as you'd like, we have all evening," said Roran.
It was as he was standing there, feeling relaxed and comfortable, with Vassilian next to him and Sarah present in his shadow, that he felt the tremors of the first explosion.
(2)
On instinct, Roran twisted his head and called, "Sarah?"
He immediately chided himself as an idiot, remembering that Sarah was trapped within his shadow, even more blind than he was.
"What's wrong?" Vassilian asked.
A second tremor shook the floor beneath their feet. This one was bigger than the last and was followed by a muted booming sound coming from outside. Roran ran to the wall of windows and gazed out over the city. Pillars of fire were climbing into the sky, their tops capped with black smoke. Dozens of small shapes were moving in the sky like lazy birds, flying ships floating over the city.
"Roran?" Vassilian called.
Roran bit his tongue, lost for words and ideas. More tremors shook the sanctuary, closer this time and louder.
"I don't know," Roran said. "I need to-" He froze. What did he need to do? Check on his friends, both stronger and more capable fighters than he? Check on the children from Sunridge, who were half a city away and split between the matriarchal house and Darling's mansion? Search for his father, who was the most rugged and stubborn person he'd ever met.
"Roran, I'm scared," said the Prince.
Roran gripped the hilt of his sword for a lack of anything better to do.
"Pelkha is here," he said. "She'll keep you safe and give me directions if I'm needed elsewhere."
Roran wasn't sure if he was talking to the Prince or to himself. Vassilian grabbed his arm gently, his hand trembling around Roran's bicep. Roran turned to face Vassilian. He forced himself to smile. He didn't want to worry the Prince.
"I'm here," Roran said. "I'll protect you."
The Prince's shoulders relaxed a fraction of an inch and he responded with his own uneasy smile.
"I trust you," he said.
Then the floor gave out.
Cracks exploded beneath them and the floor sagged. Roran's etchings flared to life on instinct, bolstering his strength and hardening his skin like steel. The floor collapsed altogether and suddenly they were falling. Roran reached out for the Prince. The fingers touched. He grasped Vassilian's hand, clinging on for life.
They plummeted through the first couple of floors. The ceiling overhead shuddered and collapsed as well. Sarah was clutching Roran's robes. The defensive etchings had failed enough that she could move freely again.
"Roran!" she screamed, her voice quiet compared to the deafening rumble of the building falling down around them. Roran saw others in the tumbling debris, tumbling among chunks of stone and tile. Roran saw Pelkha's glimmering form, her white and metallic robes contrasting the dark hues of the stone around them. She was flailing just as much as everyone else, desperately trying to press her hand against a chunk of stone twice as big as she was.
Sarah vanished from Roran's side and Pelkha went spinning away from them.
Roran looked back to the Prince. They locked eyes. Roran's were full of dust and debris and were watering as they continued to plummet towards the destroyed lower floors below. Vassilian's eyes were bright and shining and full of fear. Roran felt a sudden impact and then there was darkness.
It took Roran a while to regain his senses. He never lost consciousness but he was disoriented and lost track of his surroundings. He was being crushed on all sides. His skin was on fire as he dumped energy into his etchings, keeping them alive and burning. Breathing was nigh impossible, each breath requiring assistance from his focus markings just to expand his chest.
As he came back to himself, he tried shifting. He could barely move but he was able to roll sideways, getting the worst of the weight off his back and allowing him to breath. As he moved, the debris settled around him, crushing him in new and painful ways. Roran grit his teeth and pushed through it, forcing air in and out of his lungs as he continued flooding his etchings with strength, knowing that the moment he stopped he would die.
Dust and jagged particles caught in his throat. He was too compressed to cough and so he wheezed, each lungful of air coating more and more of his insides with the painful motes of dust.
"Sarah," he called out.
There was no response.
"Sarah!" he tried again, louder this time.
Roran shuddered and his vision swam. He was overextending himself. He couldn't keep this up for long.
In a final burst of frustration, Roran let out a wordless scream, venting his unfettered rage against the unfairness of the world and dying in such a pathetic way.
His scream was answered by the shifting of rocks and boulders, of the massive chunks of debris being swept away. Light filtered in through the cracks. There was another loud rumble and the weight shifted off of him. In a fit of rage and anxiety, Roran thrashed against the debris still pinning him down and it tumbled away. He forced himself upright, into a cloud of dust and dirt. Thin beams of sunlight caressed his face as he broke free of the mountain of debris.
"Roran!" It was Pelkha. She grabbed him, holding him steady as he started coughing and retching, his spittle coming out stained with dirt and blood.
Sarah was on his other side, one hand on his back, the other one his chest.
"He's alright," Sarah said. "No internal injuries. His defensive markings held."
"By the gods," Pelkha said, her voice a strained whisper. "After all this time, I've still been underestimating you."
In between coughs, Roran asked, "What happened?"
"We're under attack," said Pelkha. "General Ahndor is already mobilizing the troops to respond but they're here, they're in the city."
"Who?"
"Uhlaran Loyalists and the Esmun Republic, they're making their move. They must be trying to kill off as many of the nobles as they can. They're trying to cut the head off the snake, so to speak."
"The Kings?" Roran asked, remembering the last time Uhlara had sent an army to King's City.
"They're handicapped. They can't fight at full strength without the risk of killing civilians. I have no doubt they'll be flaying the enemy alive, but they'll have to do it slowly, moving through the streets one at a time."
The dust was settling and Roran looked up to the sky, visible now that Sanctuary Tasos had been reduced to a pile of rubble, and that destroyed even further when Pelkha rescued Roran. A handful of ships were dipping low into the city, large groups of men descending from ropes to the streets below. Above them, more ships were moving in, descending on the first wave like a hawk on the snake, ready for a fight.
Pelkha followed his gaze. "I guess we know what they were using the fairy rock for. Defending the city is going to be difficult."
At the word defend, Roran's heart skipped a beat. He started looking around, staring at the various bodies lying around them. There were the black robed shapes of the clerks and the lightly armored bodies of Champions, interwoven through the piles of debris. The once white and cream robes of servants were now stained red with blood as they were crushed by the remains of their own sanctuary.
"Vassilian?" Roran called out. "Vass, where are you?"
"Roran," Sarah said softly.
"I have to protect the Prince," Roran said. "He's a prime assassination target, they'll be trying to kill him."
Pelkha looked down at Roran with pity.
Sarah called his name again but Roran ignored her. He had to find the Prince. He tried to stand but found that his hand was being restrained. There was something clinging onto him. Looking down, he found that he was clutching another hand in his own. The hand was soft in his grip, and the attached arm was buried under a pile of debris.
(3)
Roran screamed, "Vass!"
He grabbed the debris and started ripping it off of Vassilian, his vision blurring as his etchings hit their limit and he pushed past them. His muscles strained against the weight of the stone chunks and he felt tendons pulling in his arms and shoulders despite his enhanced strength.
"Roran, he's gone," said Sarah, her voice barely more than a whisper.
"But he, we..."
Roran turned to Sarah. She was kneeling beside him, her face as white as grave lilies. She looked exhausted. A layer of sweat glued the fine bits of lace to her face and neck. She stared up at him with the same sadness that always overcame her when she was forced to perform her duties as a lyhlim.
"I saw him across myself," she said. "He didn't want to linger. He didn't want to distract you."
Roran felt like he was suffocating. He kept sucking down lungfuls of air but none of it seemed to do any good. He collapsed to his knees. Now that the surge of adrenaline had passed, he felt ill and his body was alight with pain. It felt like he'd been stabbed by a hundred small knives.
"Roran," it was Pelkha this time, "get yourself together, we have work to do."
"The Prince is dead," he said numbly.
"Your role as bodyguard was never your highest priority. Enemies swarm our streets. Our citizens are being slaughtered as we speak. I need you to take a contingent of the guard and establish a perimeter-"
"The Prince is dead!" Roran said again, louder this time. Shattered bits of stone crunched beneath his knees, the sudden flare of pain galvanizing him. "They killed Vassilian."
"The Prince was a figurehead, nothing more. You have more important matters to attend to."
"He was kind, he cared about the people around him. He didn't deserve to die like this. I...I-"
"For the love of the Kings, Roran. Get yourself together."
"Fuck the Kings!" Roran roared. He was back on his feet, a fresh geyser of rage was erupting inside him and he turned it on Pelkha. "The Kings can do us all a favor and die!"
"Roran, I know you're upset, but I need you to-"
"I don't care what you need. Prince Vassilian is dead. Uhlaran soldiers are filling the streets and they all want my family dead."
Roran realized this as he spoke. He, Kell, and Nul were all prime targets. Even Karyn would be sought after, given her association with Kell. Darling was likely the main target of this entire endeavor. His earlier evaluation of his friend's safety began crumbling away.
Kell was still adjusting to her new fighting style and was known for running headfirst into impossible fights. Karyn was an excellent fortuneteller and priestess, but she had no combat abilities to speak of. Nul had slept less in the last year than Roran had in the last week and their sanity was constantly under question.
"I need to go," Roran said, suddenly. He needed to find his family.
"You're not going anywhere," said Pelkha. She moved in front of him. "As your commanding officer, I'm ordering you to take a contingent of the city guard and establish a perimeter around the ruins of Sanctuary Tasos. We need to be ready for when the King returns with his necessaries."
All at once, Roran felt confused and enlightened. It was as though an obvious secret had revealed itself to him. Something that didn't make sense but was a perfectly reasonable assumption.
"Necessaries?" he asked.
"Yes, like the Queen and his advisors and assets."
"You want me to establish a perimeter so the King, a god among men, an immortal, can have somewhere safe to hide his favorite pets?"
"Roran, we don't have time-"
"Fuck the Kings and fuck you with them!" The geyser in Roran's chest had turned into a volcano. He was boiling over with molten rage. "Everyone I love is being hunted. I don't care if King Tasos doesn't have a safe place to stash his favorites. I care about my family being slaughtered in the streets."
Pelkha took the brunt of Roran's rage without flinching. She looked at him the way one looks at a child throwing a temper tantrum. When he'd finished, she said, "Roran, as your commander, I'm ordering-"
Roran wrenched the golden bracelet off his wrist and hurled it at Pelkha, missing the mark but making his point. He turned his back on her and began climbing over the rubble, heading towards the city.
"I'm done with this charade," Roran said, not so much as looking at Pelkha.
There was movement behind him, the noises of Pelkha attempting to chase after him, but Sarah's presence condensed and hardened. She manifested out of his shadow, a fully formed specter of death.
Roran didn't turn around to see the confrontation. He knew that Sarah was blocking Pelkha's way, drawing a line in the sand and claiming her territory. Roran didn't know what specter Pelkha's understanding of death conjured, but it was enough to stop her in her tracks. Roran walked away from Pelkha and she didn't follow.
Once clear of the ruins of Sanctuary Tasos, Roran broke into a run. From this high up on Mount Tasos, Roran had a perfect vantage point of the city. The columns of fire were beginning to settle down now, their initial bloom of destruction ending as quickly as it had started. There were a handful of flying ships hanging low over the city, ropes dangling towards the ground where they had dropped off enemy reinforcements. The ships of the King's Army loomed over them, inching closer and closer, but unable to unleash any of their firepower due to how close the invading ships were to civilian buildings.
"Sunridge," Roran said between breaths. "We need to get to the people from Sunridge."
"What about the others?" Sarah asked, her image appearing beside him, running in time with him.
"Karyn is with Darling, and Kell will head there too if she's not already there. Nul will come to the same conclusions as me. That will be the safest place for us. We need to get the kids from Sunridge over there too."
"How will we get the kids across the city?"
The distance between the Sunridge house and the Cataegis mansion wasn't too far, easily walked on a normal day, but Uhlaran soldiers and warriors from the Esmun Republic were filling the streets.
Roran grit his teeth. "Through a river of blood if necessary."