Kiri was playing messenger between the Smuggler’s Nest and the Guildhouse. She supposed some people in her position might have been annoyed at being relegated to such a role, but the fact was she was just happy to be keeping busy. Because every time she stopped, the thoughts started intruding. She was just thankful her ability to think about multiple things at once could be suppressed. Otherwise, even with the activities she was undertaking those rogue thoughts would be intruding. Thoughts like how she would be leaving Galle and everything she had ever known.

  Sure, she’d made plans before with Nate to go visit the world he came from when he finally found it. She had absolute confidence that he would, after all. But those plans had seemed distant, with many steps to be taken between the present and that future. Now, she had a few months and then they would be gone to who knows where. It was happening so fast and she was still reeling from the realisation. And that was just the tip of the spear.

  There was the fact that she was going to be a Lesser Divine. Her Skill Evolution was proof of it, and just like Nate, she’d only been given the one option. She doubted she would be given an option to remain Mythic, and even if she did, she wouldn’t have taken it. Ascending to the heights of power had always been her dream and now she was walking that path. Just to remind herself she brought up her Status.

  Her newest Skill was to improve her Veils. She had some hope it would apply to the Soul Engravings she used for Nate and herself. On that note, she had a new slot for a Soul Engraving, but Nate was busy and she wasn’t about to interrupt him for a new rune to engrave on her soul energy. Even if he could spin a basic one up for her in a few minutes, it might throw him off his train of thought and he had clearly been intent on something. So, the new engraving could wait a little bit.

  The other change was the soul contracts. She had held one for Jacque and for Evindal and Luc. At this point, she hadn’t seen a point in holding onto them. It was simple—a matter of showing some trust for those who had stuck by Nate and herself through thick and thin. Even Jacque had proven himself in her eyes.

  But the item she had been looking for was her new Skill Evolution. Soul Sanctuary of the Everborn. A Divine Skill. A reminder that she had done it. In her darker moments, she told herself all that it had cost her was Coralie and her bitch of a mother. Just a whisper in the back of her mind that she ruthlessly suppressed every time it reared its ugly head. She knew she was not to blame for their actions, and it was just a remnant of who she had used to be. That person had always wondered if she was good enough and, as far as Kiri was concerned, that person was dead. Because she was good enough. She had told herself the same thing over and over and it was getting to the point where she didn’t need to remind herself, where the thought, the idea, was becoming ingrained in her. But the ghost of her past would occasionally rear its ugly head when her emotions ran wild. It happened less and less, though. Progress, she reminded herself, was what was important.

  Looking around, the Guildhouse gave the appearance of a slightly empty kicked ant’s nest. Guildies were wandering aimlessly, gathering in groups or working tirelessly, with Aisling the Queen at the centre of it all. The number of Guild members were vastly reduced from the usual. Many had fled after Allais’s takeover and the tasks dedicated to assisting the guards in the Capital. Then more had fled after Aisling’s announcement, likely fleeing the crimes they had committed or the reprisals they expected. Then there were those who had taken the contracts related to the war with Asmuisil. Of those, none had returned to the Capital. Instead of a few hundred members, Kiri counted around sixty.

  Of those sixty, some were assisting Evindal in taking stock of what remained in the Vaults after Allais’s blatant looting. The word was that less than a third remained, and what did remain was mostly weapons and armour. The Orbs were almost entirely gone. Of course, some of those had been discovered in Allais’s storage device. Still, it was a fraction of what the Guild once held. Allais had bought her allies' loyalty and Kiri had done the mental math on the damage. It would be years before the Etruan Guild Branch recovered.

  Deverell stood next to Aisling, the Stormspear’s ever present shadow assistant. Kiri’s once mentor, now friend, had a literal pile of tomes out around him. Aisling had immediately moved to contact the neighboring Guild Branches to notify them of what had happened and it was Deverell writing the messages and conveying the responses. He was also handling communications with Hildi, and it sounded like Princess Morgane intended to come directly to the Guild as a staging ground for the planned assault on the palace.

  Then there were Cutter and his fighters from the slums. They were still moving around the city, split into two groups. The first was the fighting cohort who were searching out pockets of resistance from the Capital guards or a few small forces of nobles hunkered down in their villas in the Noble District. The second group was for those injured in the engagements. That group moved back and forth between the Guild for healing and wherever Cutter had gotten to. Kiri’s main job had been keeping in communication with them, since she could track Cutter down easily enough and cross the city in seconds. She may have joined them for a few engagements as well, just to keep things interesting. Just a few, as she was supposed to be recovering her soul energy. She mostly came out ahead on the soul energy from those exchanges by draining her opponents.

  Still, while everything seemed to be coming together on their side, no one thought that the palace would remain silent for much longer. She was just happy that this entire fiasco was ending. The sooner it did, the sooner she could spend her remaining time with her family and friends before being forced to say goodbye.

  As Deverell waved her over, she prepared to deliver another message to Cutter and his fighters. The night was almost over and soon the sun would rise on a changed Etrua. She intended to be there to see it.

  *************

  Nate stared at the list before him. He had over a hundred Sigils to choose from but cataloguing them mentally had gotten him nowhere so he had written them out so he could visually inspect them. All he really knew about Bordain’s Embodiment was that it was based on soul energy and seemed to be something to do with ruling or leading. That left a lot of options - none of which he had exact Sigils for. Instead, he needed to come up with some form of Conceptual synergy, like what Morgane had done with Resonance and Sound. A resulting rune that was greater than the sum of its parts.

  Bordain was only one of the reasons he was trying this method. The other was that his own burgeoning Conceptual Embodiment would likely let him draw Divine Energy if he made such a discovery on his own, and while he might not be able to store it, he could evolve one of his Skills with the resulting energy. Though, that plan was secondary to trying to guide some of the energy into his puzzle box.

  Among the Sigils he saw a few opportunities but none that struck him as amazing. Soul combined with Gentle could try to smooth over the effects of Bordain’s aura Skill. Soul and Reinforcement was obviously a path towards a protection-based approach and would work well with Barrier. Similarly Soul, Space and Barrier could potentially create a zone of space in which foreign soul energy couldn’t exist. All interesting approaches, but all defensive. If Bordain was a Mythic class holder as he claimed, then he likely had higher Stats than Kiri and himself. The extra thirty or so levels were just one part of the difference. Bordain likely had Skill levels to match and that would just compound any differences. Then, of course, there was the man’s Embodiment bonus. Something Kiri and Nate still lacked. The differences between them would probably mean that Bordain could simply brute force through any sort of defence-type approach Nate took. Certainly the defences would buy them time, but buying them time wasn’t the goal. Victory was. There was an argument to be made that they could simply overwhelm the man with numbers if Nate could create a defense strong enough to protect everyone for a time. Though even that proposition had flaws. Bordain was, after all, not alone. He had Luc’s half-brother and the female Fire Mage at the very least. Probably the shape-changing assassin as well. Maybe others? There was a lot to consider and he was working with limited information.

  Regardless, the two ideas went to war in his head. Defense or subversion. He had a penchant for both and while he preferred subversion, using his opponent’s powers against themselves where possible, perhaps he should just go with the simpler approach of creating a rune for defensive purposes. There was a way he could do so, after all. Using the same trick twice seemed a little trite, but there was no arguing with the effectiveness. It would mean sacrificing his Mana Release trinket, but he was going to need to replace it soon anyway. Or, at least improve it.

  With a smile he settled on defense and found the three Sigils he intended to use. The three Sigils were not ones he had already picked in his previous musings, but the goal was to find a beautiful synergy that built on itself. Soul, Protect and Body had such a synergy. Soul energy was stored in the Body and the idea of using the Body to Protect the Soul from outside influence seemed like it would work. Drawing the rune, he used Conceptual Runic Mastery to recreate it in the air. As mana flowed into it, he could tell it needed something else. An anchor which could tell it which bodies to protect. That necessitated the introduction of the Target and Connect Sigils. If he had more time, he would’ve created fresh items to use as the connections, but he didn’t. Morgane would be in the city within hours and the people he cared about would be in harm’s way. Taking off his Mana Release trinket, he used Conceptual Runic Mastery to erase the runes on it, then Multi Conceptual Material Shaping to cut it into over fifty pieces. That was as far as he could stretch it while retaining enough space to put the connecting rune on it. The result would make the Soul Protection rune target anyone who had the connecting rune pressed against their skin.

  Frick appeared in the room and started dumping filled mana gems into his Runic Gallery as Nate worked.

  “What now, Boss? We going after the head honcho?” asked his Familiar.

  “It’s that or leave Aisling and the others to deal with the fallout on their own. I doubt Bordain will be forgiving of them toppling his ally and working with Cutter to remove the guards. Same could be said of us as well, I guess,” Nate replied in annoyance.

  He was, he admitted, angry about the whole situation. All he’d wanted to do was craft, create art, and spend time with his friends and family. But every step he had taken forward seemed to come at the cost of being drawn into the tangled web of politics and jockeying for power. Logically, he could see how power called to power, but that didn’t make him any happier about the situation. That was why he was going to see this through to the end. If he could help them remove Bordain, then perhaps he would get a few months of peace before Arikanvil called in the tasks owed. Nate had so many plans he needed to enact before he left and so little time to do so. The sooner this whole fiasco was over, the better.

  “I need you to do something,” he said to Frick, before explaining what he wanted the goblin spirit to do.

  Frick was cackling before he had even finished.

  “The damage, Boss… it won’t be small if it goes up in smoke,” hedged Frick, a toothy smile on his face.

  “I know. We can fix it after the fact. Can you do it?”

  “Sure. I mean, drag it out a little if you can. That’s a tight window… but if we no longer care about hiding it, I can get it done.”

  Nate nodded in satisfaction and the still cackling Frick vanished as he went to wreak havoc.

  His spirit was doing its part and now it was time for Nate to do his. He spun up the final version of the rune he had been working on and began powering it. Using Conceptual Insight, he paid special attention to the Concepts in play and how they were interacting. The whispers felt so much less now that he had seen the interactions with his eyes. Like the difference between hearing the sounds of waves and seeing the ocean. They were still enough for him to glean deeper truths, though, and he could feel how the Soul and Body Sigils interacted, feeding off each other, like two halves of a whole. In that crack that separated them he found a hint of a Concept that he had not included. The smallest piece of Life leaked through the gap and he smiled in understanding as Reality resonated with him and the world became more real.

  Discord Channel

  Patreon with up to 20 chapters ahead of RoyalRoad.