Tales of Death´s Daughter

After we had acquired our glasses in the commoner district, there wasn’t much to do for us. Clothing wise, we didn’t fit in anyways and got more attention that I would have liked, but we managed to avoid most of that by using the less visited side streets … but we did manage to secure some drugs! I wasn’t entirely sure for what we would use them yet, but we did secure a lot of it. The poor drug dealers had no chance but to hand their goods over or pay with their life. I´m sure most were quite angry afterwards, but what were they going to do? Tell the guards?

And after that, there basically wasn’t anything to do in the commoner district. As such, we visited a vacant house which housed an entrance to a secret tunnel and used it to cross the second barrier to our goal easily. Now, with the noble wall behind our backs, we surfaced in a park once more and let the twins breathe in the atmosphere.

“Woah, that’s so different from the commoner district.” Trees lined the pathways, benches were in the park and lanterns illuminated the area. This place had something idyllic to it which was hard to deny … it made me think of burning it all to the ground in all honesty.

“Welcome to the world of decadence where people celebrate while an army of undead ravages the country and keeps the city in lockdown. A world full of lies and deceit, a world in which the human life has no value whatsoever … except its their life.” For real though, I firmly believed these people in the park didn’t think they were in danger at all. That was a foreign concept to them. Sure, the soldiers died protecting them and even if there wasn’t any soldier left, the commoners would be the next. But they? Nobles rarely died in battle, mostly because they filled the upper ranks who gave out orders without picking up a weapon themselves.

“And why do you want to get rid of them again?” Clara asked unsure. But she was kind of right. I never told them why nobility as a concept needed to be gone, both from a societal standpoint and mine.  

“Because they amass power and hold onto it. In an ideal world influence is evenly distributed amongst everyone but myself … and they are in my way of going there.” The issue with nobles were that they were hard to replace. A lot had to happen for the king to intervene in noble matters and replace a few of them. I needed the administrators of this country to be less incompetent and less powerful. Nobles would never agree to the way I wanted this country to be governed … and so they had to go.

“Ok. Cool.” It was obvious neither Clara nor Clarice had too much interest in my motivation and I kind of lost them halfway. They were only interested in the bloodshed I would cause and nothing more. And that was for good reason. Not everyone liked to engage with politics, myself included. But sometimes, I just had to do it for my own merit. It was bothersome, but so were these headaches assaulting me rather regularly at this point.

“Can we go into one of these mansions already?” Clarice asked a bit hopeful.

“Maybe later.” We weren’t going for the low hanging fruits. Our goal was obviously the highest tree in the forest, the person holding nobility in check, but also in power. But till we got there, we needed to work out a plan to get inside first. Sadly, there weren’t any tunnels beneath the royal wall anymore and so, we had to get through the gate which was a rather tedious task considering the twins didn’t have any status altering equipment on them.

But I was sure we would find a satisfying solution to this problem as well, even though we had to get a little more creative than usual.

But before we even got to the gate, we kind of noticed a repeating pattern. Even one was out here with their pets in tow, and by that I didn’t mean their servants went out with their pets, but the nobles themselves which was kind of rare.

“So cute!” Clara pointed towards a little dog in front of us, pulling on the rope around its neck with vigour. Truly, the sight of a creature rebelling against its owner was indeed admirable as it was something I was very much familiar with.

“Thanks a lot! But sometimes he is acting up like this.” The female noble added in desperation while I went down a little and stared into the dogs’ eyes. He began barking right away, probably sensing that I wasn’t exactly smelling like others.

“Oh? He doesn’t seem to like me either.” I mentioned casually and pulled my hand back as the dog wanted to bite into it.

“We do have something in common then. Hey, do I know you from somewhere?” The noblewoman pulled her pet backwards angrily and harshly. I was sure the dog choked a little because he whined afterwards which certainly drew the attention of all the pet lovers around us.

“Me? Oh, you might have heard me because my family has a lot of animals.” I nodded towards the guard as she was next in line to place her hand on that ball which revealed her status to the guards.

“Really? I and here I was, wondering why a group like yours is queuing up without any pets whatsoever.” The guard nodded towards her and she stepped through the gate, allowing me to place my hand onto the ball.

“I’m sure you will see my three pets at some point. They are hard to overlook after all.” Instantly, my soul was scanned and I blocked it off like usual. But this time, I didn’t just swat the nerve wracking feeling away like a fly, I tore it apart with all I got, trampled on it with my invisible feet and spit on it for good measure. The ball, otherwise glowing with a faint blue light went dark immediately, baffling the guards by quite a bit.

“That’s nice to hear. I think I’ll vote for your pets then. Until then!” Apparently, the noblewoman didn’t want to be dragged into the mess I created which was understandable.

“That … never happened before.”

“Yeah, yeah. But make it quick, alright? We have an appointment with the king and are already running late.” Hannah told him quietly.

“And who are you?” He asked back, still fumbling with the fried machine.

“The ambassador of the elven kingdom and these three are my subordinates.” Hannah showed him her ears but the rest of us, still wearing our cool sunglasses, didn’t follow up on that.

“Is that so? Why do you wear weapons then?“ The answer to this question was rather easy. Because we would murder. But that wasn’t something anyone could tell the guard, was it?

“We have to warn him of a catastrophe befalling the Worchester Kingdom. There are traitors within the palace already, planning to disrupt the defence of this city. We need to get through. Now.” Hannah didn’t wait any longer. Under the protest of the surrounding guards, she forced her way through without any issue, the three of us following behind her at all times.

“Halt right there! You can’t leave like this.” I was the only one turning around while Hannah and the twins apparently chose to ignore the guards completely. Looking back at him, I pointed towards the sky behind him.

“Dragon.” I stated a little worried I might lose Hannah. With my abilities I wouldn’t be able to find them again.

“What?” The guard was quite stunned about my childish attempt and thus didn’t turn around at all.

“There is a dragon behind you.” I stated once more while the atmosphere around us shifted a little. The nobles walking their pets towards the palace halted their steps, the dogs barked loudly or scurried away.

“Quit joking …” An ear shattering roar resounded behind him as the undead dragon flapped its wings loudly, hovering in the air barely illuminated by the lamps on the wall. Finally, the guard turned around as well while I curtsied a little. It was always a pleasure to help my fellow citizens after all.

Turning around swiftly, I followed Hannah and the twins inside the palace with all the other screaming nobles. And I put a bit more fuel into the fire.

“Oh no! We are all going to die!” I screamed loudly having finally caught up to the others. The dragon – naturally my underling – immediately took cover in the sky again and hidden from all the prying eyes, he drew his circles high above us out of reach of every magic normal humans could muster.

Getting inside the palace was thus a relatively easy task. All it took was one dragon to knock on their door and we were in. Nodding towards Hannah, we all made our way through the foyer filled with panicking nobles who for the first time realised that their life was on the line as well. It was truly an eye opening moment for them. The problem was that except blocking our way, there wasn’t anything else they did.

Well, except doing what I had hoped to avoid by all costs.

“The saint … the saint is here!” Smiling a bit bitterly, I waved towards the man who shouted that out before being grabbed by Hannah. She immediacy pulled me out of the closing cauldron of people and rushed towards the nearest door. On the way, the people looked at us with a mixture of fear from the dragons, hope that we were back even though my name must have been pulled through the mud and confusion as well. We shouldn’t be there at all, but more and more people recognised me which proved them that the impossible was in fact possible. But hey, I was the saint. Wonders were basically my job.

And thus, I wondrously disappeared through a side door, leaving that mess behind a door.

“Wohoo … it’s the saint.” I made a little fun of the nobles enthusiasm with a rather monotone voice while Hannah was already scurrying away from the door. “Please tell me you do know the way.”

“We would be in trouble otherwise, wouldn’t we?” The door was already opening again, a few less panicked nobles going after us as we dashed around a corner as fast as we could. Luckily, we did shake these nobles off rather quickly and managed to get back onto the predetermined route quickly … well, that was what Hannah told us. But at least I knew we were close to our destination as we ascended a stairwell with a few windows in the walls.

Outside, a bright magical barrier covered the whole palace in a circular fashion, enclosing the building itself, the garden and the walls as well. That did come as a surprise, not gonna lie. But it wasn’t unfixable.

“Can we have fun now?” Clarice asked a little meekly while tracing the wall to her right with her right hand.

“Soon … very soon.” I told her which drew a smile onto the twin’s faces. They didn’t mess up once so far which was indeed kind of surprising, but also a welcome development. I had to applaud them for that and didn’t mind giving up on my own fun because they behaved so well.

And then, we arrived at the massive doors I hadn’t seen in a long, long time. They were beautifully ornamented just like all this time ago. Breathing in, I curtsied towards the two guards pointing their spears at us and smiled brightly.

“Thank the gods we finally found someone. Say, did you already deal with the dragon?” I was absolutely sure they didn’t, but it could t hurt to ask, could it?

“We are not allowed to leave this post, no matter what.” Well, someone must have been anxious about his throne being stolen or something. I really had to wonder where that came from …

“But you might have heard it, right? How far away are the walls again?” I asked them nicely.

“Three kilometres, mam. And now please turn around or we will use force.” I kind of wanted to see that. Smiling, I took of my glasses and showed them my eyes. A mixture of shock and recognition appeared on their faces while the twins ducked beneath their spears, pushed them upwards and grabbed the guards’ throats.

“Don’t kill them.” I strode past them, my goal being to open the doors to my throne.