The party surged out into the hall ready for a fight. Leon judged it impossible that Dionysias had come with only three other eleventh-tier mages and made no other arrangements, but it seemed that was the case as they were met with nothing but silence and an empty hall. Still, the pulse of magic that echoed in the walls after the party slaughtered Dionysias and his helpers was unmistakable, and there was no other realistic option than to flee. Wherever Kamran was, he was sure to learn of what happened here, and when that happened, the best defense Leon and his party had was to be as far away as possible.
Not wanting to waste what seemed like good fortune, Leon silently led the party down the hall, speeding as quickly as they could manage. Cassandra ran right behind him, with Valeria behind her, carrying Ariana. Justin had wanted to do so, but a dark look from Valeria had him backing off, and Leon’s wife carried her mother instead of Ariana’s husband. So, Justin followed Valeria, his eyes rarely drifting far from the two most important women in his life. After him came Nestor, and then Alcander, Zhang, and Daryun.
All were wearing their armor, and their disguise enchantments were barely able to conceal the powerful Adamant. Leon couldn’t know how long they had, but he guessed they barely had any time now before the disguises failed, revealing the men and women beneath. Their faces were at least concealed thanks to their helmets, but their armor was distinctive enough that Leon doubted that would be a great impediment to finding out their identities—but they still had some time left, and he intended to use every second.
Thanks to Hasahlain’s information, Leon already knew most of the ways to get out of the tunnels. In fact, the decision was made difficult not by finding a way out, but by having too many ways out, though not all were viable. The tunnels that led deeper into the palace were out of the question, as were those that led back toward the celebration. Dealing with the other Lords with an unconscious Ariana slung over Valeria’s shoulder was not what Leon wanted right then.
So, that left a bare handful of possible exits. There were four tunnels that led to the palace’s outer grounds, and Leon judged those to be the most viable. Of those four, only one was near a Lumenite portico. Between trying to fly off the palace island under their own power or commandeering a Lumenite strand, Leon decided that the strand was safer—not safe, but safer—and bolted in that direction.
But as they surged down the tunnels, their footfalls quieted by the thick carpets beneath their feet, a strange thing happened: nothing at all. No blaring alarms, no army of guards pouring into the tunnels, no furious Kamran descending upon them like a god intent on punishing sinful mortals… Even the shining statues in the alcoves they passed remained motionless.
And yet, Leon was resolute in his belief that something had been tripped, and that someone was alerted. For the moment, he decided to thank his good fortune and press on.
Through the halls they thundered, passing countless doors and stairways leading back up or further down. Kamran’s secret tunnels were twisting and followed no coherent plan; it seemed like the labyrinthine design was supposed to confuse and disorient potential intruders, and without Hasahlain’s map, it would’ve been effective. As things were, within minutes, Leon’s party slowed as they approached a large set of doors at the end of one branch of the tunnel network.
“We have to get these doors open,” Leon said, his heart thumping mightily in his throat. “From there, we head directly south, to the Lumenite strand. We can get back into the city from there and disappear.”
Nestor pushed past everyone else to begin working on the door. The Paladins formed up behind them, watching their rear. Valeria knelt, shifting Ariana on her shoulder while Justin inspected the unconscious woman. Leon noted that he also pressed a spell against his wife, keeping her unconscious for at least a little while longer.
As Nestor wove magic in the air, undoing the wards keeping the doors shut, two of the six suits of armor standing vigil in dark alcoves in this hallway suddenly sprang to life. They stepped out into the hall proper, but before they could do much, A burst of fire, wind, and light from Alcander, Daryun, and Zhang, respectively, barreled down the relatively tight corridor and slammed into them with all the power of three twelfth-tier mages.
The suits didn’t stand much of a chance and shattered almost instantly. The wisps within burst apart in a shower of golden sparks, and Leon felt the intense flash of magic as the autonomous magical constructs ‘died’, insofar as such things could die.
Again, he felt that same pulse of magic run through the walls, repeating what he’d felt in the wake of killing Dionysias. This time, however, the response in the palace was immediate; the lights dimmed, a subtle wave of static-like power washed over the entire palace, and the other four suits of armor animated, stepping out of the alcoves.
The Paladins moved quickly, launching another intense magical barrage down the corridor, and the two closest suits were obliterated in seconds. The latter two, however, hurled a pair of spears in those few seconds that the other two had bought them. These spears and the Paladins’ power passed each other in the hall. The Paladins’ power reached the suits first, and they fared as well as the other four had, being torn asunder with little ability to resist. The spears, however, flew straight and true, and proved themselves deadlier than Leon was expecting when one of them struck Alcander’s bulky frame and knocked him down. The other spear, thankfully, Zhang deflected with his own weapon, and it went clattering against the walls and fell to the floor, the last of its momentum carrying it all the way to Leon’s boots.
With a quick flexing of his aura, Leon pulled the spear into his soul realm—a small indulgence to satisfy his desire to inspect more of Kamran’s runework. Alcander, however, remained on the ground, gasping like a fish torn from the sea.
“Al!” Leon called out. The man’s aura was fading fast, but Leon couldn’t tell what was happening with him. He bore no sign of injury, and his armor hadn’t been penetrated, but some baleful power was winding its way through his aura, and it seemed there wasn’t much the man could do to stop it.
“It’s open,” Nestor calmly said behind him.
“Grab him!” Leon ordered Zhang and Daryun, the former of whom snapped up the larger man as if he weighed as much as a newborn. It was almost comical seeing the more-than-seven-feet-tall Alcander being carried so easily by a man more than a foot shorter than him.
Not sparing another moment, Leon crashed through the doors, Iron Pride out and ready. When nothing but an empty stairway greeted him, he pulled his weapon back into his soul realm and began to ascend, the rest of the party falling in behind him.
His breathing was ragged, and his blood thundered in his ears more urgently with every step he ascended. He expected Kamran to crash through the stone around them at any time, or a thousand horrors that defied description to act on his orders and hunt them down. The ascent up the stairs, however, while dark, was uneventful.
Nestor wasn’t needed at the top of the stairs; Leon knew how to access these doors thanks to Hasahlain, and he wasted not a moment in slamming his hand against a glowing runic circle and activating it. The blank stone wall that had greeted him at the top of the stairs slid into the wall beside it, revealing a veritable warehouse beyond.
As far as Leon knew, this particular hall tracked census data for Kamran’s entire realm. The warehouse was hundreds of feet long and hundreds wide, and the rounded ceiling rose into the air like a sky unto itself. Despite this vast expanse of usable space, the warehouse was tight and claustrophobic with stacks and stacks of boxes, each one containing thousands of pages of documents. This was less than a year’s worth of census data, as far as Leon knew, and the warehouse was already as full as it could reasonably be.
As interesting as he was sure the census documents were, he ignored every box as he waved the rest of his people out of the hole-in-the-wall he’d just stepped out of. Cassandra followed him, then Valeria still carrying Ariana, Justin, Nestor, Zhang carrying the wheezing Alcander, and Daryun bringing up the rear. Once all were through, Leon closed the door behind them.
“To the southern Lumenite portico,” Leon whispered. No more words were needed. No alarms were blaring, but the nature of the magic in the walls had changed, and Leon could feel the palace itself searching for them. Now that they were above ground, any cover they had in the secret tunnels—which likely wasn’t much given the security golems activated in their presence—was gone, and anyone who could see through Kamran’s wards would be able to see them.
As Leon led his party through the tightly packed warehouse, he sensed Nestor conjuring runes around them. The buzzing in the walls quieted as they moved, and he guessed that the dead man was doing something to shield them from the palace’s sensor enchantments.
He wasn’t sure if what Nestor was doing would cover them from physical sight, however—a point which became salient when they reached the doors of the document warehouse, and after cracking it open, voices were heard in the halls outside.
“… kicked out now, of all times?” one voice complained as it passed the cracked door.
“Don’t complain,” another responded, this one older, gruffer, and resigned to what was going on. “No one would be fool enough to do anything in our Lord’s palace. Most likely, one of the guests did something that the wards are sensitive to, and out of an abundance of caution, we—”
“Cease your baseless speculation!” a third voice shouted, this one much angrier and more authoritative than either of the others. “All personnel are to report immediately to their designated rally points and wait there for further instructions! All of you know who is supposed to share that space with you, and all unfamiliar faces trying to wait with you are to be reported! Unless you have something to report, you will wait in silence!”
The grumbling died down, and several dozen pairs of feet trudged past before fading into the distance. These people, Leon knew, were the bureaucrats working in the palace, similar to Maemon. Despite the holiday, the palace was still packed as the bureaucrats worked to keep the city running smoothly during the celebrations—a particularly important task given how many Lords were currently in the palace. They were no threat, but Leon wanted to avoid them as much as the guards, if possible. He was happy they were being corralled into specific places, so he didn’t have to fear running into one at an inopportune moment.
Maintaining his silence, Leon activated his armor’s invisibility enchantment, while a pointed look at his people ordered them to do the same. Thankfully, Valeria and Zhang’s enchantments enveloped Ariana and Alcander, too, and the entire party disappeared.
Leon then pushed the door fully open and led the party into the well-lit hallway beyond. The magical lights burned in bright but neutral tones, keeping the palace from feeling too oppressive while also not overpowering the light pouring in the windows. At this late hour, it was mostly the silvery pseudo-moonlight of the Origin Spark that illuminated the world outside, but enough light was still pouring in that even without the magical lights, even a mortal would’ve been able to comfortably see in the hallway.
But admiring the palace was far from Leon’s mind, and he led his people onward. He set a hard pace, moving as quickly as he thought they could get away with, which was much slower than they were capable of. But even without alarms echoing through the halls, guards were posting up in every intersection in the hallway, and beside every major door. Echoes from deeper within the palace indicated that the palace guards, already increased in number to ensure peace during the festival celebrations, were mobilizing.
But so far, no sign of Kamran. Other auras were lighting up all over the palace, especially around the wing of the palace where the visiting Lords had been brought to, but the Lord of the palace was nowhere to be seen.
Their luck was holding, but their room to maneuver was shrinking. Already, Leon could feel a company’s worth of guards were at the portico he wanted to use to escape, along with at least one eleventh-tier mage, with more post-Apotheosis mages moving in the portico’s direction.
Leon, still ghosting through the corridors as fast as the party could move stealthily, could feel his stomach drop as another eleventh-tier mage arrived at the portico. A twelfth-tier mage was close, as was another eleventh-tier mage. A second company of guards would arrive in minutes, and two more were gathering in nearby courtyards.
It would take minutes to reach the portico if they didn’t pick up the pace, but if they moved more quickly, then it would mean abandoning stealth.
Leon hesitated for mere fractions of a second. Then, he let his invisibility drop, startling the half dozen guards in visual range. But none of them were even tenth-tier, let alone post-Apotheosis, and in a flash of blinding light, Leon cut them down, splaying their gore across the walls with a few quick swings of Iron Pride. The rest of his party followed his suit in dropping their invisibility.
“Moving quick?” Daryun asked.
“Yes,” Leon answered.
None of them needed any more than that. They didn’t quite thunder through the halls with all the subtlety of angry rhinos, but they came close. For the moment, alacrity and violence of action carried them as magic began surging through the walls. Leon could sense the palace’s defenses were being concentrated around the other Lords and the deeper wings of the palace, but the Lumenite porticos were also seeing their wards increasing in power.
A thin smile broke out across his face. ‘We can make it,’ he thought.
They ran into a few more guards, but they were quickly dispatched. They were starting to attract attention, and Leon could sense more active wards flaring to life around them, but Nestor was disrupting most of it with rapid runework as they ran. At some point, and he couldn’t pinpoint exactly when, the reason why powerful wards weren’t springing into place to block their movement was more due to Nestor’s efforts rather than complacency or relative weakness on the part of Kamran’s defenses.
Soon, with bloodied weapons and roiling auras, they burst out into the courtyard before their destination. Five hundred guards in gleaming plate and shining weapons blocked their path, with two eleventh-tier mages and one twelfth-tier mage blocking their path. Beyond them lay the portico and the Lumenite strands that could bear them down to the city. Even if the Lumenite itself wasn’t usable, Leon figured they could at least hurl themselves off the side of the floating island and reach the city that way—with some help from his dead many-times-great uncle boring a hole through the palace’s outer defenses.
“Halt!” the twelfth-tier mage shouted, displaying far more confidence than Leon thought he should when faced with a team like Leon’s. “You dare to bring violence into Lord Kamran’s home?! Surrender at once, or face wrath the likes of which have not been seen since the Great Lord Khosrow’s time!”
Leon answered with a swing of Iron Pride. His disguise was warping, bits of Adamant gleaming through cracks in the broken form he’d assumed for hours, now. But given the threat he was facing, he didn’t dare remove the armor to try and eke out a few more minutes. He could see that his situation was mirrored amongst his companions, who also swung their weapons.
Intentionally holding back his bloodline, golden lightning erupted from Iron Pride, alongside the magics of the rest of his active party. Kamran’s guards projected protective magical fields, the power in their armor overlapping and amplifying themselves in ways that reminded Leon of the shields of the Bull Kingdom’s Legions. The post-Apotheosis mages leading them took more active defensive measures, using their power to try and directly contest the strength of Leon’s party.
They were blasted backward, power tearing through their defenses. One of the eleventh-tiers dropped hard, blood seeping through the joints in his armor—Daryun’s work, his wind having cut through the mage’s aura and slipped through every gap in his armor that existed.
The twelfth-tier, meanwhile, shouted in pain as Leon’s lightning ravaged him. He fell, blackened but breathing, and went still. Leon wasted no more time with him, cleaving through the rest of the guards as Cassandra and Justin launched themselves against the final eleventh-tier mage.
There was no mistaking them now, and before they’d cut through the guards, Leon could sense the palace defenders start converging on their position. He could also sense the attention of the Lords in the hall, all watching, few looking to interfere. Though evidently they were primarily made up of friends and allies of Kamran, none were going to respond to this disturbance in the man’s palace.
Leon was the first to cut through to the other side. Even holding back his bloodline, Kamran’s rank-and-file guards were no match for him; nor were they able to hold back the rest of his party for long. Cassandra and Justin had the most trouble with the last of the post-Apotheosis mages, and both of their disguises failed. But they still won, leaving the mage broken on the ground, only a flicker of life remaining in his eviscerated form.
With all of his people with him and none looking particularly injured, Leon led them onto the Lumenite platform.
“Is this thing functioning?” he asked.
“No,” Nestor immediately answered. “But I can make it function.” He didn’t wait for a response and began weaving his runes into being. It wasn’t an immediate fix, and Leon could feel more mages approaching, but they hesitated in nearby halls and courtyards, waiting for reinforcements before challenging the party that had just cut through two companies and three post-Apotheosis mages. But of all the men that he was looking for, Leon still had yet to sense the one he was most anxious about meeting in batt—
A sudden welling of furious power drew his attention from a tall tower close to the rest of the visiting Lords. Stone evaporated around this nightmarish aura, and lightning so thick that it more resembled a pillar of light than the jagged bolts that Leon was used to erupted into the sky. In the ruins of the tower appeared three men, but only one of them was the source of this power; the other two seemed content to watch from a distance.
Powerful magic senses crashed down upon them, stirring up the wind into a howling gale and filling the air with lightning and thunder. Kamran’s malevolent gaze struck them harder than any storm ever had, and for a moment, they were all the targets of his ire.
But then, the man’s magic senses concentrated on two figures: the first was Justin, standing on the Lumenite platform without his disguise. The second was Ariana, still carried by Valeria, and still unconscious.
Never before had Leon felt someone else’s wrath so intensely. It thickened the air, almost burned his lungs as he breathed, and dissolved the stone around them. The palace’s wards flickered under such wild and chaotic power, and then began to twist apart. The entire floating island shook under the pressure of Kamran’s wrath, and cracks shot through entire halls, shattering windows and bringing roofs crashing inward.
Like the brightest bolt of lightning, Kamran shot toward them, but with a flick of his fingers, Nestor erected a shining white shield that the Anax nearly crashed into.
“Just… one… more… second…” Nestor hissed as Kamran slammed his bare fist against the shield once, twice, thrice. Cracks spread over the shield as the rest of the party prepared themselves, but just as the shield shattered, they were enveloped in brilliant golden Lumenite and borne away, leaving the palace and Kamran behind.
But even as they vanished into the golden Lumenite, Leon saw the mad look in Kamran’s eyes, and he knew that the man had at least recognized Justin. The Lumenite had bought them an extra few seconds, and if they wanted to get away, they were going to have to spend every single one of them wisely…
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