Seth Richter
patreon
Bk 2, Chapter 6: Making Moves
🕑 Added 2024-01-09 09:01:25 +0000 UTChttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1Pj85msJRniE9AzoTWcglvhCqozEtHcM-TwwrDcl69ik/edit?usp=sharing
--
"She...what?"
"The queen made her move against the nobles. One earl and two counts – three noble families, wiped out to the last. It could be more, though."
Cayden stepped back and gestured, waiting until he heard Jeremy's boots clomp past him before closing the door. "To the last? Like...women and children, too?"
"That's what I heard. The guild was going crazy with the news this morning. It's all secondhand, but enough of the older adventurers seemed to be taking it seriously. So I figure there's at least some truth to it. And then I figured you should know, considering...well..."
Jeremy's voice drifted off, and Cayden nodded. Jeremy was one of the few people not directly involved with Duke Vass' death to know the true story of what happened – at least one of the few Cayden had told. He'd come to visit Cayden at the healers, and Cayden had been too tired and relieved to come up with a convincing excuse for his friend.
"Do you know what noble families were targeted?"
"Earl Jacoby was the earl. I don't know about the counts."
"Earl Jacoby. That's...the one with the falcons?" Cayden asked.
There was a pause. "I thought he was the pegusi breeder."
Cayden shook his head. He'd learned the names and some trivia about all of the high noble families in the kingdom, but most of it hadn't been particularly useful in determining the political opinions and alliances of those nobles. Jeremy had been in a similar remedials class but had even less zeal for learning about politics than Cayden.
Cayden wondered if he should track down Elise. She'd certainly know the different noble families, or at least be able to quickly find them all out...but for all her intelligence, Elise wasn't the most politically savvy. She'd be able to help him understand the facts of what had happened, but the meaning behind the facts? And what blowback the events might trigger at the academy and beyond?
He shook his head again, wishing Delphia was still around. As a noble herself, she'd been the one to advise them on all things political in the weeks before the confrontation with Duke Vass.
There was a squeak as a door opened behind him.
"Did I hear you right? Earl Jacoby is dead?"
"Tiana! You're up! You didn't talk to the princess last night, did you?"
"Good morning, Jeremy," Tiana called, ignoring Cayden's question as she moved into the kitchenette and fiddled with Cayden's dirty dishes. "Did I hear you right? You said Earl Jacoby is dead?"
"Er, yeah. At least that's the rumor in the adventurer's guild. And good morning."
Cayden sighed. It was clear Tiana had yet to forgive him for his words the previous afternoon.
“Earl Jacoby was one of those nobles most closely aligned with Duke Vass,” Tiana said with her [Dual-Speak] skill, the connection including both Cayden and Jeremy. Cayden heard a choking sound from where Jeremy was sitting. "Calm down, it's just a skill so I can speak privately.”
“Am I able to..." Jeremy began, before pausing. "I guess that answers that. One second.”
And Cayden saw a prompt inviting him to accept Jeremy's [Bind Minds], [Share Senses], and [Threefold Cord] skills, the trio of skills that made Jeremy such an invaluable member of any team.
"Oh, this is different," he mentally heard from Elise a moment later after accepting. "I like that I can talk back. But is that your emotions I'm sensing?"
Cayden would have responded. He had some experience with Jeremy's mind-melding skill, after all, and already knew the differences between it and Tiana's more niche [Dual-Speak]. He could faintly feel Tiana's curiosity, mixed with a muted anger whenever her mind was directed toward his. From Jeremy he could feel almost nothing, only a faint sense of worry leaking through the skill.
But he was too busy reveling in what he could feel from his other senses. Because, for the first time in a week, he could see again.
A week wasn't that long, in the grand scheme of things. Nothing at all, considering most people who went through what Cayden did would be dead. And of those who might survive, most would have to scrimp and save for years to afford a healer able to give them back their sight.
That knowledge did nothing to diminish the joy Cayden felt upon once again being able to see.
It was through Jeremy's and Tiana's eyes, so the perspective and some of the colors weren't quite what he was used to, but that did nothing to diminish his excitement. He wasted no time hopping up from the couch and striding confidently around the common area, reveling in the certainty that he wouldn't accidentally bump his shins into something Tiana had moved from its proper place while he was gone.
"Hah, I suppose I should have offered to use my skills on you before this," Jeremy said, obviously understanding what Cayden was feeling. Cayden didn't mind the pseudo mind-reading. He trusted his friend, and the small invasion of privacy was more than worth the gift of vision.
"Don't worry about it," he responded. "I didn't think of it, either."
They let Cayden wander around the room for a minute, Tiana's irritation slowly fading in response to his obvious joy.
"Okay, sorry," he said as he sat back down on the couch. "Back on track; Earl Jacoby was aligned with Duke Vass, Tiana?"
Despite the return to the heavy subject, he couldn't help but feel that things were so much brighter – literally and metaphorically – than they had been a few moments before.
"More than that, his lands were within Duke Vass'. He was probably one of the nobles closest to Duke Vass, in policy if not in power. He almost certainly knew of the attempted coup beforehand, if not aided with it directly."
"What does that mean for...the princess?" Cayden asked. He was going to say 'me', but changed his mind at the last moment. Though his contribution to the duke's death had been significant, Cayden knew he was no more than a minor pawn in the games the nobles played. It felt wrong – arrogant – to speculate on how the deaths of entire noble families might affect him.
Asking about the princess was slightly more palatable. And as much as he might wish otherwise, he knew that he and the princess were on the same side, at least in the eyes of any nobles who knew of his involvement in foiling the coup.
The glance Tiana shot him – viewed through Jeremy's eyes – made it clear she knew what Cayden really wanted to ask, but she didn't call him out. "For now, it's a good thing. It casts some doubt on any ideas the queen might have been involved in the coup herself."
Next to him, Jeremy sucked in a surprised breath of air.
"Taking out the earl shows that the queen is, at least publicly, aligning herself politically against the former duke," Tiana continued. "Now, whether that's just a front or whether it will carry over into actual policymaking, only time will tell. If we can learn which counts were targeted, and whether any other higher or lower nobles were eliminated, it will tell us more."
"I can check that for you," Jeremy offered.
"Are you sure? He's kinda stupid, but I'm sure that's something my brother can suss out on his own, now that you've alerted him," Tiana replied.
Jeremy chuckled. "It's no trouble. I'm planning on heading back to the guild, anyway. It would probably be more difficult to avoid the news than it would be to learn it."
Cayden chose not to rise to his sister's bait. "Does that mean the princess and us are safe, then? If the queen is targeting supporters of the duke, she shouldn't come after the ones who killed the duke. Right?" As much as he wanted his contributions to remain anonymous, Cayden had no illusions that the new queen was ignorant.
"...that does seem likely," Tiana responded with a slow nod. "But then, she's in a very powerful position right now. Having survived the coup, the loyalists will be flocking to her royal banner more than ever, while those who might have previously opposed the royal family will be laying low. She has a lot of power, but it’s fragile. And with the princess as the largest threat to that power..." Tiana shook her head. "As long as the new queen doesn't go too far, she can get away with a lot using the deaths of her family as an excuse. Everyone will be trying to keep their heads down and weather the storm. I suggest we do the same."
--
For all that the news of the noble deaths seemed significant, Cayden didn't notice much changing at the academy. Aside from his roommates and a few others in his frontliner class, he hadn't been on speaking terms with many other students, and it wasn't like that had changed in the wake of the semester ending.
He did notice that the noise in the dining hall when he ate lunch was more muted than usual, the voices tense and hushed into whispers. And when the sixth bell had sounded, he heard the clatter of two separate trays hitting the ground.
The students were obviously tense, but from everything everyone told him, the academy should have been safe. The powerful instructors wouldn't allow assassins or even the royally mandated legionnaires onto the campus – but neither would they allow non-academy students to seek shelter within its walls. Only those who had legitimate reason for being there could claim sanctuary.
The rules for what constituted 'legitimate reason' were straightforward: the students needed to have been enrolled in the previous semester and planned to enroll in the subsequent semester, and they needed to continue to pursue advancement while staying at the academy. What form that advancement took could vary greatly from student to student; many chose to pursue lessons that the academy would not normally teach, learning from the affiliate academy instructors rather than main academy instructors. Others simply engaged in self-study, spending hours in the library or arenas, training and learning in equal measure.
Most, though, took advantage of the looser schedules of the academy instructors to hire one-on-one individualized instruction.
"WHY ARE YA TRYING TO FACE ME?! YER EARS ARE ON THE SIDES OF YER HEAD, AREN'T THEY? USE 'EM!"
That was what Cayden was currently doing, to his regret. It was significantly more expensive than the one-on-one training he'd purchased years earlier in Avernon, but Cayden was significantly more wealthy than he'd been back then. And the personalized training from Instructor Barry, the frontline combat specialist instructor, was correspondingly more valuable than the training from the adventurers in Avernon.
Cayden just wished it wasn't correspondingly more miserable, as well.
Forcing himself to quit spinning, he simply stood, listening for the tell-tale clomping of whatever movement skill Instructor Barry used to seemingly teleport around the arena. To his left? He wasn't sure. He heard a soft whistle and knew his time was short. Taking a guess, he leaned forward out of what he hoped was the projectile's trajectory.
And got pegged by a wooden ball directly to the back of his head.
On Earth, the hit would have meant a concussion at the very least. Even with all Cayden's passive defenses, the impact still hurt. But Instructor Barry knew Cayden's durability well; he threw the balls with enough force to leave Cayden reeling but not enough to seriously injure him.
At least that was what the instructor claimed – Cayden was less sure about his assessment, but he didn't have the luxury of complaining with how much he was paying for the instructor's time.
Cayden shook his head to refocus, preparing to listen for the whistling of the next wooden projectile flying through the air, but before he could get set he got hit again, this time to his calf from the left.
"YA CAN'T TAKE ALL DAY TO FEEL SORRY FOR YERSELF!" Instuctor Barry's loud voice echoed across the sandy arena. "I BARELY THREW IT! SHAKE IT OFF AND GET READY FOR THE NEXT!"
And so it continued. Ball after ball, impact after impact. Cayden stood in the sands and took the hits, wincing each time but never calling out in pain or protest. Some – out of luck more than any epiphanies with his perception – he managed to dodge. But if he ever came close to growing a large head from his successes, the next impact was quick to follow, knocking his noggin back down to size.
Cayden had no idea how Instructor Barry managed to throw so quickly from so many directions, or where he was storing his ammunition. It felt more like he was facing a surrounding army than a single instructor, and the 'attacks' continued without pause. Over and over and over, Cayden attempted to listen and dodge. Until finally, after close to twenty minutes of the exercise and covered with sweat, Cayden's foot came down on one of the previously thrown balls after an over-zealous dodge and he crashed into the sand.
There was a pause in the throws as Cayden just lay on the ground, gasping heavily.
"I suppose we'll call this exercise here," he heard Instructor Barry say at a more reasonable volume before the dullahan picked him up by the back of his shirt and set him back on his feet. "Walk it off, and we'll talk in a bit."
Cayden stumbled away, mostly just shifting back and forth from foot to foot with his arms over his head as he pulled up the notifications he'd ignored while dodging. [Other Ways to See] and [Awareness] had both leveled up to three and two, respectively.
Other Ways to See (passive) (lvl 3): Increases perception stat for all senses except vision by 64%, and decreases perception stat for vision by 28%.
Awareness (passive) (lvl 2): Increases perception stat by 31%. Gain a slight intuitive understanding of surroundings.
Both the skills were powerful, especially [Other Ways to See] since the downsides were completely negated. But even with the boosts, he had been nowhere close to consistently sensing the locations of the approaching balls. Perception was one of his lowest stats, barely above a base human's average, and slightly more than doubling his measly thirteen perception wasn't near enough to turn him into Spiderman.
Skills leveling always felt good though. He swiped away the notifications and focused on recovering.
A minute later and with Cayden just slightly less out of breath, they met back in the center of the arena.
"So," Instructor Barry began. "What was the purpose of the exercise?"
"Training my perception," Cayden gasped out.
Instructor Barry stared at him with a single raised eyebrow.
"...and how to use that perception." Cayden finished a few breaths later.
"Correct. Knew there was a reason I liked you," Instructor Barry stated, but Cayden didn't have the energy to feel pleased with himself. "Most will increase their stats and then think they're stronger just cause the numbers went up, not realizing until it's too late that they ain't got the foggiest idea how to actually use those stats. Now some may see it otherwise, but losin' yer eyes is a blessing. Most don't get the chance to train their non-visual perception properly. Some foolishness about walking around blindfolded for days being embarassing. And the BAM!!" Instructor Barry clapped and Cayden jumped at the gunshot-like echo. "Their glowstone gets stolen in a cave-dungeon and they're completely helpless."
Cayden obviously couldn't see the instructor, but he could easily enough imagine the look on the dullahan's face: disapproving frown, his head wobbling precipitously at the end of his nearly-severed neck as he shook it back and forth. It was an expression he’d worn often in the daily frontliner class.
"That won't be you though – YOU will be prepared for any circumstances, so the next time yer eyes get poked out, ya won't even flinch. So, yer homework: before the next lesson, delve a dungeon. It doesn't have to be a tough one, you just gotta get used to facing some real danger while blind. No cheating with that formine friend of yours' skill, though."
Cayden gave a resigned nod. He didn't think these lessons typically had homework, and he hadn't even scheduled or paid for any subsequent lessons. But he knew better than to argue with Instructor Barry.
"We still got some left in this lesson though, and you've been resting long enough. Time to work on yer spatial memory. Follow me, I've got the obstacle course set up over here."
Cayden very consciously didn’t groan, but it was a close thing.
Previous Chapter -- Next Chapter
