Alarion knew from the moment he awoke that a nest of vipers awaited him, yet it still pained his heart to see their slithering hunger on such clear display. They’d been waiting for this. Longing for it. It was not a question of whether the snakes would strike, nor even when.
Only which would be first.
“So, was this one c-cute?”
Bergman. The traitor.
The [Sympathetic Wordsmith] had been large when Alarion met him, and time in the Auxilia hadn’t diminished his bulk so much as it had transformed it. His once round belly had shrunk a few belt sizes, compacted into a gut of hard muscle by Kali’s relentless physical training. With Bergman’s voracious appetite undiminished, his frame had only grown wider, his shoulders now thick with corded muscles. The unit quartermaster had given up on ordering him fresh uniforms after Bergman had—in his words— ‘grown too thick for any of them’.
All that muscle wasn’t just for show. Though Alarion could still crush his friend through an overabundance of System-granted Attributes, point for point, Bergman was stronger than even Kali, a strength Bergman had earned despite a heavy handicap.
Looking at the empty, pinned sleeve of Bergman’s uniform, Alarion decided to permit his friend a few cheap jibes.
“She was—”
“Very cute,” Kali said. “And here he is—recently bathed, with a fresh uniform. He was hoping we wouldn’t notice. But we did.”
Kali—on the other hand—had earned none of Bergman’s reprieve.
“I’m already considering bringing you up on charges for trying to poison me with your personal supply. Are you sure you want to keep pushing?” Alarion asked, though the threat drew only laughter from its target. “Can we—”
“No, not cute.” Lily chimed in from the corner of the large conference room. She had a steaming cup in her hands and a pained squint to her eyes that suggested she was battling many of the same demons as Alarion. Despite that, she was as frustratingly put together as always. The powder blue of an Auxilia service uniform would never suit Lily’s shadowy style, but no one could say she gave it any less than her all. “Witch is cute. This woman was elegant. Alephian silk was never to my taste, but any woman who can afford it is far too good for the Master Sergeant.”
“He did land her,” Kali pointed out. With no seat large enough for him, the ivory-skinned Godborn had settled opposite the door; his arms crossed, with one rugged boot leaving prints on the wall as he leaned against it. “Against the odds, but still.”
“Are you done?” Alarion asked, dryly. If threats wouldn’t work, perhaps indifference?
“N-Nowhere near,” Bergman warned. “I t-think the Sergeant started saving up jokes around the second dance last n-night.”
“Still sour about the last rotation?” Alarion asked the towering Godborn, “Or are you jealous that I don’t have to pay?”
“A bit old for you, wasn’t she?” Kali said, as though he hadn’t heard either question.
“That seems to be his type.” Nessa’s unexpected voice made Kali jump in surprise, much to the bemusement of Bergman and Lily. Though the girl remained invisible to the naked eye without an act of will, her progress toward Actualization had made her much easier to detect for those with the right System- enhanced senses. “I am not sure I want to know what that says about him. Or what horrid traps have been left in my psyche.”
Rather than engage with the banter any further, Alarion turned, pushed the door firmly closed, and tightened his grip around the handle. With a modicum of effort, he pulsed mana into the complex set of privacy wards that surrounded the chamber. They flickered with white-blue light, slightly overcharged by his lack of finesse, then settled into their regular function.
Having any private conversations away from Bergman’s self-built warding scheme in Ilvan-Trai was dangerous, but the military conference rooms at the Governor’s palace were the next best thing.
“Why am I only hearing about this now?” Alarion’s tone was as stern as he could make it as he turned back to face his friends. They’d had their fun—for the time being, at least. “Why weren’t we warned?”
“I have told you before, I am a piece, not a player.” The humor was gone from Lily’s tone, replaced with caution and a hint of defensiveness. “They tell me what they need to, and nothing more.”
“So you’re as useless to us as you are to them,” snipped Nessa.
“Nes,” Alarion warned as he shot Lily an equally stern glance. Anti-toxin or not, his head still ached, and the last thing he needed was to have the two of them at one another’s throats yet again. “Player or not, you’ve heard nothing?”
“We d-don’t think they knew either,” Bergman said as he slid one of several thin folders across the table. “She isn’t one of theirs.”
General Information
Name – Anastacia Regethern Species - Human Sex - Female Age – Nineteen Years HP – [Redacted] MP – [Redacted] Stamina – [Redacted] Aptitude - [Redacted] UCL – [Redacted]
Attributes
[Redacted]
Classes Known
[Redacted]
General Skills Known
[Redacted]
Class Skills Known
[Redacted]
Traits and Feats of Strength
[Redacted]
Flaws
[Redacted]
“How enlightening,” Alarion grunted.
Redactions in a Vitrian dossier weren’t unusual, though he’d never seen them to quite such an extent. As Master Sergeant, Alarion was privy to the nearly complete dossiers of the Vitrians under his command, but that privilege did not extend to his superiors. The few officer dossiers he’d bothered to read had been heavily blacked out, yet even those had included basic details such as level and classes. This barely even had the woman’s name.
Regethern. Where had he heard that name?
“Who is she?” Alarion asked, looking again to Lily, their resident Vitrian.
“Looking again already? Oh, you heartbreaker.” Kali quipped.
Alarion didn’t even spare Kali a glance as he said, “Enough.”
“She is dangerous.” Lily cut in to answer the original question. “The Regetherns are as old as Vitrian lineages get. They were one of the original families granted seats in the Celesian Curia. Back before there were even Numbered Houses, let alone an Empire. Old family, old money, old power. Anastacia is the only daughter of a second seat—”
“V-Vitrian royalty,” Bergman summarized.
Alarion spared a quick glance at Nessa, then consciously tightened his grip on their bond before a swell of emotions could form into a feedback loop. Both were thinking of the last such girl Alarion had encountered, though neither would say it.
“Which House is she from?” Alarion inquired after taking a breath to steady his nerves.
“The House of Guilt,” Lily answered.
“That…”
“D-Doesn’t make a lot of sense. We k-know,” Bergman confirmed as Alarion gnawed on the information.
While there were seventy-seven Houses that made up the Vitrian Curia, there were eight that were the center of Vitrian politics. Hunger, Sorrow, Loss, Rage, Pain, Longing, Anguish, and Guilt. Each of the Eight held sway over several smaller Houses through patronage, tradition, bribes, and coercion. Those blocs and the interplay between the eight Houses that led them were the gears that kept the Curia turning.
Because the power blocs were more of a loose coalition than a political party, each of the Eight had a wide range of goals and policies. In practice, this meant the allegiances among the Eight were a baffling mess of interconnected, often seemingly contradictory agendas. The Houses of Hunger and Rage were severely at odds when it came to taxation in Imuria, for example, but stood shoulder to shoulder on the subject of military spending to ensure the payment of those taxes.
Trying to untangle the full weave of Vitrian politics was a fool’s errand. But given enough motivation—and Lily’s expertise—Alarion had been able to unwind enough of the threads to tell friend from foe on the subject of Ashad.
The Houses of Rage, Anguish, and Hunger spoke loudly and often about the ‘mismanagement’ of Ashad. They viewed the Grand Awakening not as an opportunity for the Empire, but as an existential crisis that was not being taken seriously. They viewed the rise in Ashadi nationalism as dangerous. As the unwilling public face of that movement, Alarion bore the brunt of their rhetoric. They’d called for his censure, his demotion, and an investigation. Recently, several clients of the House of Hunger had been calling for the Trinity Commission to be reopened, hoping to tie him to that slaughter.
And those were merely his enemies.
His friends among the Eight were the Houses of Sorrow and Longing, or really, Governor Williams and Syrus Feln.
Williams’ motivation seemed obvious on the surface. Ashad was his career, and Alarion his standard bearer; when Alarion succeeded, so too did Williams. But it went deeper than that. Williams was client to Emmaline Feln. She and her adopted father had backed Williams’ run for Governor and given him the full support of the House of Sorrow. Syrus had very publicly insinuated—without ever outright claiming, of course—that he had buried the hatchet with Alarion over any involvement in Sierra’s untimely death. Syrus even had the gall to claim that meeting with Alarion had filled him with new drive to see Ashad succeed—as a legacy to his daughter.
It was all lies, obviously. They were fattening him—and perhaps Ashad itself—up for the slaughter.
That was why they’d sent him Lily. Lowborn and unawakened, she was unthreatening and nearly as much a victim of the Empire as he was. Charming, intelligent, and motivated, she was equal parts publicist and spy—working to build Alarion’s reputation for some unknown purpose, while simultaneously passing along his secrets.
Until [Shared Burden] had given Lily what even Emmaline Feln could not.
An Awakening.
Lily had spent the last two years in penance, doing her best to right wrongs for which she had long since been forgiven. As a Vitrian who tried to live up to the ideals her culture preached, it had been difficult for Lily to lie to Alarion, but it was considerably easier for her to lie to Emmaline once Lily saw her for the snake that she was.
It was Lily who’d kept Alarion’s secrets, and it was Lily who’d helped divert and disrupt some of the younger Feln’s schemes. Though Alarion could do nothing to dismiss the two men Emmaline had bribed Williams to slip into his company, knowing who they were was enough to feed them scraps of misinformation while keeping them far afield whenever things actually mattered.
With Lily’s help, Alarion had even managed to strike back, if only ever so slghtly. A year earlier, Emmaline had arranged through Williams to have the 238th assist in a complex subjugation in the Principalities. Sold to the 238th as an inter-provincial show of support, the entire reason for the endeavor was to have Alarion leave Ashad long enough to coincidentally cross paths with Emmaline Feln in the one province her father felt it was safe for her to visit.
Why she wanted to meet him was still a mystery. Perhaps she hoped to follow in her father’s footsteps with some harrowing realization about Alarion’s family, twisting the knife one final time as a form of cheap revenge.
Whatever the reason, it was a pity for her that a last-minute error in his schedule forced Alarion to depart mere minutes ahead of her arrival.
Local time was such a finicky thing when one traveled.
Suffice to say, his friends were arguably worse than his enemies. Which left only the indifferent Houses of Loss, Pain, and most notably, Guilt.
“They have nothing in Ashad.” Alarion frowned, flipping through the dossier again as if the magically obscured text would solve the puzzle in front of him. “Are they at odds with the House of Sorrow?”
“A bit of bickering, but that is normal among the Eight. Certainly nothing that would warrant sending their eldest daughter,” Lily answered.
“Or Willaims accepting her,” Kali gruffly added.
“A rift between patron and client?” Nessa suggested. Though the young girl had next to no interest in Vitrian politics, she had quite the nose for it when it suited her. “A shot across the bow to Emmaline? Williams’ ego has been growing for years. Letting another House take over might be a way of—”
“No,” Lily cut her off. “Emmaline wants Alarion in charge. This would be a slap in the face, a direct betrayal.”
“Mm, because no Vitrian has ever betrayed their Patron. Right, Lilith?”
“A-Actually—” Bergman winced as the pair’s irritation turned his way. “I t-think Williams might be in the clear.”
“How so?” Alarion asked, as eager to avoid a spiraling argument as he was to hear the answer.
“L-Look at her contract date,” Bergman said, tapping the top corner of his own copy of the dossier for evidence. The young man waited until he saw Alarion’s eyes tighten in confusion, then continued, “S-She met William’s f-filter. Her previous contract expired l-last week.”
Alarion snorted in amusement. Even he had to admit that it was clever.
“Okay, I’m missing something,” said Kali.
“Is it M-Midweek already?” The joke earned Bergman a round of genuine chuckles, but it was the substantial glare from Kali that made him answer more seriously. “W-Williams selects officers with a few days or w-weeks left on their contracts, so that they expire on their w-way here. T-This one signed up like all the others, then s-signed a new contract.”
“This would be her… sixth extension? I think?” Alarion’s eyes narrowed as he read over a personal history that he had barely even skimmed on first reading. “Initial induction at ten, she spent three years as a page in the Curia, then another three in civilian engineering, followed by two years in provincial Auxilia.”
“She Awoke at ten?” Nessa asked. “That is younger than you.”
Alarion scowled. He’d trained his soldiers not to treat things like Aptitude and age of awakening as anything to be proud of, but that was an easy stance to hold when he was almost always at the top of the pile.
“So, we’re stuck with her for a year then,” Kali said.
“You are stuck with her for a year,” Alarion reminded him. “Because you are here forever. I have five months left.”
“Mhmm,” Kali responded, each syllable dripping with a lack of conviction. “Sure you do.”
“Kali.”
“What? I’m agreeing with you.” The mountain of muscle levered himself off the wall with a grunt and said, “We know the how, we have no idea about the why, and I’m honestly getting bored with this cloak and dagger shit. She’ll be here in a couple of hours, so how about you just ask her?”