Recindril Tostral restrained his urge to pace while he waited for the signal to come. It wouldn't do to show signs of nervousness in front of the dozens of other nobles assembled for this ambush, after all. Still, he couldn't stop his thoughts from going over all the ways disaster could happen. It's been 4 days since I forced Prince Hinren to respawn. The Crown has shown no public reaction yet, but surely they have at least considered how to prevent a repeat. Will we find ourselves facing King Elston himself? We're not ready for that yet!
He carefully kept his face a mask of calmness despite his racing thoughts. No, no, he wouldn't involve himself so directly yet. I think. The Crown will no doubt escalate, yes, but Elston himself is their ultimate and final option. They have not yet exhausted their other tools. Perhaps, they might even exercise caution? The Crown cannot ignore a threat to a house treasure—regardless of how unprecedented vault-breaker devices this capable are, such a clear break of their sworn promise would be intolerable—but they might send a large contingent of royal guards, perhaps even with a field deployment of a royal mage, in lieu of a Kalor scion. If so, then a fraction of our prepared forces will suffice to overwhelm them.
He was tempted to hope for that outcome, but a shrewder part of him rejected that hope. No, they might hold back the scions in reserve in case they're needed elsewhere, but sending royal guards in lieu of a scion when a scion is unquestionably called for would be admitting weakness. Besides, I shouldn't be hoping for an outcome that would negate the point of today's attack; our goal with this is to weaken the Crown by killing another Kalor scion.
Preferably a different one. He huffed and smiled slightly at the thought of the youngest and weakest member of House Kalor. Probably a different one. They might send Hinren again to rectify the disgrace of his failure from last time, but I expect they'll send someone more competent instead to ensure success. The Crown's response to threats and opposition has always been to escalate. They'll expect us to escalate as well, considering how things have gone so far, and they'll send someone capable of beating the escalation that they expect. Possibly even Crown Princess Brenelle.
He pictured the Crown's heir in his mind, majestic in her strength, fervor, and certitude. She takes after her father well, and she's far more dangerous than Hinren will ever be. They won't expect us to be ready to beat her. But… Recindril let a vicious smile touch his lips. They have no idea how many nobles responded to the hint of weakness in the Crown that Hinren's defeat exposed. We have all chafed under the Crown's overbearing authority for far too long.
His speculation was abruptly brought to a halt by the arrival of the awaited signal. Multiple signals, in fact. There's the signal for too many royal guards
and the signal for a Crown scion? Even if a scion brought guards as well, the arranged protocol was to only send one signal. Did the signaller misunderstand the instructions? He mentally scolded himself for letting the unexpected combination push him into indecisive slowness. Regardless, it's unambiguous that our target is there.He called out, "First wave, go!" That was for the group of 9 young nobles from various houses standing ready on the other side of the room. Several of them wore eager grins, and a couple were almost bouncing with excitement. They were all newly-raised to power and inexperienced, chosen because they had not yet advanced beyond the level of the highest available wellspring, so the loss of power from their expected respawns would be quickly recoverable. None of them seemed to care that they were expected to die, sacrificial pawns to buy a few moments of time for the true combatants. Their leader shouted a cheer, and the rest began to echo it, only to get cut off mid-shout as the whole group teleported out.
Recindril immediately called out again, this time to the nobles directly around him, "Prepare yourselves!" Dozens of hands tightened on assorted weapons, a few mages and mystics firmed their grip on their magic, and he pressed the button on the Mass Teleport item they were all gathered around. He had no time to reflect on how extraordinary that enchantment also was before its spell catapulted them all into battle.
He barely had time to register an incoming rock and jerk his head to the side to dodge it. He spared only the barest of glances for the ramparts of the castle surrounding them, just enough to note that no one truly powerful was fighting there. He turned his attention to the central keep and was unsurprised to see a large hole in the side of it. That vault-breaker may be powerful, but it certainly is not subtle! The intangible pressure of a royal soul exerting itself in combat nearby was expected, of course, though it was considerably more intense than he had felt from either Hinren or Lornera. Is Brenelle really this much stronger? It can't be King Elston himself, right? The thought flickered through his mind as he continued his rapid assessment of the situation.
A flicker of high-speed motion accompanied a tremendous cracking sound as the hole in the keep abruptly widened, with a spray of cracked rocks erupting from its new expansion. The dark orange of the Crown's royal orichalcum livery caught his eye, and he looked to see which scion it was. Then another flash of orichalcum flew out to join the first, followed by a third. Recindril's eyes widened as he took in the sight of not one, but three Crown scions hovering in the middle of the castle courtyard. He barely noticed the two pieces of a noble scion's bisected corpse tumbling out of the hole in their wake.
Crown Princess Brenelle Kalor took the lead, with Lornera Kalor and Patrimmon Kalor flanking her on either side. She glared levelly at Recindril with a mix of anger, scorn, and contempt. Her mana flared strongly, and he felt the phantom grip of a targeted teleport block take hold. "Recindril, traitor lord of House Tostral, you were unwise to show yourself here. Surrender now, return what you have stolen, and confess how you did it, and the Crown will show you mercy." She leveled a quick glare at the other assembled nobles. "The same offer goes for each of you. Surrender immediately and cooperate, and you will earn the Crown's mercy."
A moment of confusion about what theft she was talking about flew through Recindril's mind, but then he quickly brushed his mana across the activation switch for the final emergency signal and shouted orders. "Plan 3! Brenelle is primary!" It wasn't a perfect match—plan 3 was for if a Crown scion brought a huge contingent of royal guards with them—but it was close enough that it should get the point across of what he meant. His shout jolted the crowd of nobles into motion just as the rest of their faction materialized in the air. A barrage of arrows, knives, fire, lightning, and more erupted in a wave of coordinated violence, converging on the Crown scions from all directions. The lightning hit first, to no apparent effect. Then the scions responded.
If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
The three of them split up and rocketed outward, Lornera and Patrimmon going to the sides while Brenelle charged directly at Recindril. They knocked aside whatever attacks were in their path and left the rest hopelessly off-target. An interlocking wall of shields, force barriers, and sharp blades sprang into existence in front of him, just as they had practiced in preparation for the worst—in case King Elston responded personally. For a moment, it seemed like it would hold as Princess Brenelle flew into it and was halted.
Then she pulled back her right fist and punched.
The entire wall shook, even with more than a dozen nobles supporting it with all their strength. The lord holding the central tower shield was knocked back several feet, and the shield itself was severely dented. A volley of arrows and fire filled the gap in his momentary absence while he gritted his teeth, bent his shield back into shape with an exertion of his mana, and flew back into place.The shield-wielder flew forward at full speed, as though to charge the princess rather than merely retake his position. She met him with a roundhouse kick so fast that even Recindril could barely see it. The shield snapped in two, both of the arms supporting it bent in places no arm should ever bend, and the man's body plummeted out of formation with no sign of slowing. Recindril caught a glimpse of his chest armor caved in. So much for that lord. He resolutely held his twin longswords at the ready and focused grimly on Brenelle.
The Crown's heir hovered in place for a moment, swatting aside a few attacks while she spoke. "You realize you're just annoying me, right?" She clapped her hands together, and a wave of force shook the formation of nobles blocking her way. Her hands took on a metallic sheen and smoothed their shape into a sharp spike, then she darted forward to slam her hand-spike through the mages' force barrier that was standing in for the now-defeated shieldbearer. Her spike pierced the barrier with ease, and the rest of her body followed right through it.
Brenelle shot toward Recindril, separating her hands on the way, and swung at him with her right hammer. Wait, a hammer? She can do blades. And she can move much faster than this. Recindril dodged easily and saw her prove him right an instant later as she swept her left arm, this one transformed into a sword, behind her to behead a noble who'd tried to stab her in the back. She swung again with her right hand as a blunt hammerhead, and he scooted back two feet in the air to stay well clear of the blow. Why is she holding back?
He kept his face a mask of intense focus while his mind raced to make sense of how Brenelle was fighting. A dozen other nobles attacked her from all directions, including several from the formation she'd just broken through, and she spun away from him to cut off someone's arm at the shoulder with blurring speed. When she attacked him again, her hammer moved faster than before, but still much slower than her sword slashes against the others. Realization struck. I see. She wants to take me alive, and she doesn't know my limits. I can exploit that.
Recindril delayed his response to her attack longer than he had to, then ducked under her swing and even flew downward with exaggerated desperation. He took a quick breath, pretending to be relieved by his success in dodging, then lunged upward with both of his swords. He pushed the flight enchantment of his boots hard, but held back on the speed of his arms. She swept his swords to the side with ease, of course, and aimed another less-speedy hammer swing at his head. He again waited and overcorrected for his dodge, moving back and away from her with seemingly-frantic haste.
Brenelle alternated between blurring-fast strikes with her left sword arm to kill or dismember others among the crowd of noble assailants, slower attacks with her right hammer arm to try to non-lethally bludgeon Recindril, and sweeping movements to blow away a wave of attacks or disrupt attempts to form coordinated teams. Her attacks against Recindril gradually grew faster, and he played along, dodging later and more exaggeratedly with each one.
Then a moment came when she was attacking with both arms and paying more attention to her sword target than to Recindril, and he seized the opportunity. He moved as soon as he saw it happening, much faster than the reaction speed he had been displaying, and he closed the distance to attack instead of dodging away. He moved inside Brenelle's reach and stabbed at her with both swords, lightning-quick. His right sword thrust for her lower chest, angled upward to reach her heart. His left sword thrust for her neck.
By the time she realized the change in his fighting speed and pattern, it was too late. The Tostral Swords, twin heavily-enchanted treasures of his house, pierced her skin and plunged deep. For a moment, it seemed that even this would be insufficient to take down the greatest of the Crown's scions. Then the two halves of the dungeon core crafted into the twin hilts activated. High-level mana cultivated over centuries rampaged through Brenelle's body as the dungeon core halves connected using her as a conduit, running wild inside her strongest defenses, and Recindril fueled the assault with all the additional mana he could push into those hilts.
The immense pressure of Crown Princess Brenelle's royal soul engaged in battle winked out, and the entire battlefield abruptly went still and silent as every single combatant present realized what had happened.
Then Lord Recindril Tostral felt the pressure grow stronger again, now from Princess Lornera and Prince Patrimmon focusing their attention on him. In unison, they rocketed toward him, abandoning the clusters of nobles they had been killing around a hundred feet away. Instead of attacking him, though, they grabbed Brenelle's body, then flew upward with unmatchable speed. He watched them go as they vanished into the distance faster than any mere enchanted item could match.
The grip of the teleport block was already gone, and he held himself ready to trigger his emergency teleport item. Are they actually retreating, or are they just preparing to blast the entire area into a crater? He waited in tense silence for a whole minute, everyone watching the skies alongside him, but nothing happened.
Slowly, hesitantly, Recindril released a sigh of relief. He looked around and met the eyes of the survivors of the battle, then nodded and began descending. "Let's see the secondary prize of this battle."
They entered the hole in the keep that the Crown scions had come out of and followed it to the bottom. Recindril could sense the broken remnants of powerful wards and the lingering echoes of the vault-breaker's work, but… He touched down on the vault's floor and looked around. There were several corpses scattered around, some of them in multiple pieces. The sacrificial first wave of young noble scions had served their role as expected. He spotted a number of valuable enchanted items, along with stacks of rare metals and other materials.
He frowned as he finished sweeping the vault with his senses. "Where is the house treasure, and where is the vault-breaker?"