“Where in the Capital?” asked Morgane.

  “Where would you like to go in the Capital?” Nate countered.

  “Is the Capital the best option?” asked the Marquess. “We should approach House Korinth and House Pleras. With Thane dead, the Duke and Duchess may support your claim rather than throwing in their lot with Bordain.”

  “The conscripts?” Nate interjected. “If you decide to visit other Houses and gather support, what will become of the remaining conscripts?”

  “They can’t keep up,” commented Olithia. “The army has to be disbanded, regardless of what we decide.”

  Morgane nodded, “They can consider their contracts fulfilled. They are free to go.”

  “Will Asmuisil allow that?” he pressed.

  “They won’t kill them, but they may take them prisoner,” answered Olithia. “Why?”

  Nate shook his head, tuning out the discussion and leaving it to Aisling. Regardless of what the Princess and her supporters decided, he was not going to leave the conscripts behind. Activating Conceptual Spatial Manipulation, he teleported to the centre of the conscripts’ camp. Kiri joined him a moment later, landing on the grass next to him. Frick was only a second behind her. With a smile for his sister and a nod for his Familiar, he used Conceptual Runic Mastery to create a rune to amplify his voice utilising the Sound Sigil.

  “The army has been officially disbanded and your contracts are considered fulfilled. The Nobles have mostly fled and those that remain will be leaving soon. You will not be able to keep up with them. You have two choices. Either gather to me, in the centre of your camp, and I will see you returned to the Capital of Etrua. Or, you can stay here. The Asmuisillan army may take you captive, but I am told they will not kill anyone. Before you decide, you should know, the Second Prince has assumed the throne, and the Capital is now under his control. The home you left behind months ago may not be the same you return to. I leave the decision to you.”

  Nate sensed discussions taking place all around him, but he didn’t have time to focus on those. He had some things to gather.

  “Guard the portal plate?” he asked Kiri.

  The moment she nodded, he activated his Runecrafted Obfuscated Portal Plate. With a single step he was back in his workshop, Frick beside him. Cutting off the portal, he glanced at his Familiar.

  “Go find Cutter. Tell him what has happened,” Nate commanded.

  In the blink of an eye Frick was gone, teleporting through the wards before slipping into the ground as the Spirit used Nate’s own Skills to track down the old sailor. Nate took the steps two at a time as he ran down to get Jacque.

  Barging into the ex-Professor’s room, it took him a second to ignore the absolute mess. The room was reminiscent of Jacque’s office when he had been at the Royal University, filled as it was with small creations and unfinished projects along with scattered notes and drawings. Like Nate, the man hadn’t skimped on his luxuries and the bed gave off a sense of Softness and Clouds while a quiet orchestral tune played from a small runecrafted box that looked oddly like a speaker.

  Jacque sat up immediately, a wand whipped out from under his pillow as he pointed the weapon at Nate before lowering it quickly.

  “What? It’s the middle of the night?” grumbled Jacque, rubbing at his eyes with silken pajamas.

  “Get dressed. Get the apprentices up and ready. Gather everything you can in spatial storages. As quickly as possible.”

  “What’s going on?” Jacque asked, already moving out of the bed and looking more awake.

  “A coup. Prince Bordain has assassinated his eldest brother, killed the King and assumed the throne. A Guild Prefect is complicit. We’re getting out of here,” Nate replied, pulling Jacque’s bed into his Runic Gallery as he set aside an area to pile up all their belongings.

  “Right…right…I’ll get the lads then.”

  Jacque vanished out the door and down the stairs.

  “Cutter says he understands and he’ll keep his family low, but that’s all he can do for now,” whispered Frick’s words in his mind.

  “Alright. Check the Den for Luc? Then see about Britt at the University? Deverell too if you can find him.”

  “On it, Boss.”

  Nate went through the building like a whirlwind, first emptying his own room into the Runic Gallery, then Jacque’s, before finishing up in the storage room that also functioned as their apprentices' sleeping quarters. With that done he activated Conceptual Material Shaping and began to take apart the building itself. He had invested enough time in improving the building, with runes to both ward against scrying and entry as well as ones to defend the place. Where he could, he extracted the wood-carved runes after cutting them off from mana. For those he couldn’t extract, he destroyed them, unwilling to leave others to find the Sigils embedded within. The process was quicker than he expected but slower than he hoped, and before twenty minutes had passed, he was standing outside the workshop, Jacque and the kids behind him, as he dismantled the last of his work. Sadly, he admitted, it was far easier to destroy than it was to create.

  Frick appeared with them a moment later, worry in his blue eyes, “No sign of him, Boss. Checked the Den and a few other places.”

  “Luc?” asked Jacque. When Nate nodded the ex-Professor continued, “He’s making a delivery. Left a day ago.”

  Nate nodded, “And Britt? Dev?”

  “University is locked down, Boss. Guards all around it and I thought I saw a couple of people with the look of Platinums. No sign of Dev, but he’s good at hiding and I didn’t sense him at the Guild.”

  Nate ground his teeth, unhappily applying the last strokes of destruction to his workshop, as he thought through the problem. Britt, Null, Karim and Ameera were likely all at the University. If it was locked down, breaking them out needed to be a priority, but not one he could attempt alone and definitely not while his equipment was bereft of mana. He needed time to prepare and just hoped his girlfriend and the other Guildies were fine and just being kept from interfering.

  His thoughts were interrupted as the sound of boots slapping on stone and sand came from behind them.

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  “For your own safety, stay in your homes. Anyone found outside will be imprisoned until the unrest within the Capital is resolved. I repeat, for your own safety, stay in your homes,” yelled a man as a force of guardsmen twenty strong marched down the street.

  Nate glanced at Frick and mentally sent a message to him, “Go out onto the Plains. Within walking distance of the Capital.”

  As Frick vanished into the ground, Nate turned to face the approaching guards, stepping forward to interpose himself between the armed men and women and Jacque and the kids.

  It didn’t take long for guards to notice them and they approached at a jog, coming to stand less than ten metres away from them. They might have walked all the way up to them but the rune hanging in front of Nate appeared to give them pause. Maintaining his Gravity Control rune, he was already preparing a secondary rune. The latter took much of its designed form from his Connected Obfuscated Portal Plates rune. He even kept the obfuscation portion, intent on not revealing his use of spatial magics to anyone sensitive to such things. Relying on his Intents, he intended to connect himself with Frick and open a temporary portal.

  “Stand down, citizen. This is your only warning!” commanded the Guardsman who had been shouting out the commands for everyone to hear.

  Nate completed his second rune, drawing on mana gems from within his Runic Gallery to power it as he gave his answer.

  “No.”

  Using his Gravity Control rune, he changed the direction behind the guards to down and added a bit of his Intent to increase the gravitational pull. He didn’t watch as the twenty guards were launched down the street from whence they came but the gasps from the kids and Jacque, as well as the sensory feedback as their opponents left his sphere of awareness, told him he was successful. Spinning, he activated the second rune, ripping open a portal to the Plains and ushering everyone through. A moment later they stood among a sea of blue-green grass that reached most of their waists. Laure, with his stocky build and being the second youngest, had the grass tickling his armpits. The youngest, Callum, had vanished into the grass and Nate was reminded that the kid looked like he had a knack for going unseen. If his sphere didn’t let him know that Callum was still with them, he doubted he could’ve spotted the child in the darkness amongst the tall grass.

  “What now? Asmuisil?” asked Jacque hopefully.

  “We’ll set up somewhere outside the Capital and continue,” replied Nate as he extracted the portal plate from his Runic Gallery and activated it, lamenting the loss of mana.

  The portal sprung up from the plate and widened until three people could walk through abreast. Nate ushered everyone through, before stepping across the threshold himself, leaving the plate behind to lie in the grass. After all, he wasn’t done yet and had no intention of leaving the portal plate lying around where anyone could find it.

  On the other side of the portal waited Kiri, surrounded by hundreds of conscripts.

  “Told you,” grumbled Kiri at the waiting crowd.

  “Took you longer than I expected,” Kiri continued, with a glance at Nate.

  “Had to clean up a few things,” he replied before looking over the crowd and raising his voice. “This will take you to within sight of the walls of the Capital of Etrua. Go ahead. We will keep it open for as long as we can, but do hurry.”

  He could, in theory, keep the portal open for quite a while, but every second it was active the runecrafted item was drinking his mana supplies. Also, while the portal was obfuscated, it wasn’t invisible, and if someone spotted it, especially after people started appearing on the plains, it could cause him other problems. He didn’t want to have to fight any more guards tonight. He needed time to recharge his barrier bracer and resupply his mana, among other things. Then he could return and break Britt out of the University or wherever they had imprisoned her.

  Jacque and the kids huddled behind Nate and Kiri as they watched the conscripts stream through the portal, some walking, some hobbling, some being carried by others. The gathered crowd quickly vanished and once the last was through, Nate turned to Kiri and Aisling.

  “I am going to set up a new location for us in the Capital. I might be a couple of hours.”

  With the accepting nods from the pair and a warning from Aisling to ‘be careful’, Nate stepped through portals' threshold himself, returning to the plains near the Capital. Frick joined him a moment later, immediately vanishing. Nate closed the portal, gathering up the plate and teleported after his Familiar. Three teleports later, Nate stood in a simple sandstone dining room. Cutter sat at the table, nursing a drink, his glowing eyes glancing up at Nate’s appearance.

  “Ello lad. Rough night? Ya look like ya been in tha thick o’ it.” asked the old sailor.

  Nate smiled tiredly, suppressing a laugh, “You’re a big fan of understatements, old man.”

  “Aye, tha’ be true. What do ya need, lad? I can’t up-end my family. They won’t leave an’ I won’t leave without em. Nothin’ ya can say gonna change that.”

  “I’m not here to convince you of anything, Cutter. I’m here to ask for a favour.”

  “Oh? Whaddya need?”

  “I need you to hide this somewhere nobody will find it, but with enough open space that three people could comfortably walk through it.,” answered Nate, placing his portal plate on the table. “Not here though. I don’t want to put your family in danger any more than they already are.”

  He couldn’t take the plate with him, since it couldn’t pass through a portal it was maintaining. Plus, if he did try and slowly teleport back to the army carrying this side of the connected portal plate with him, he would lose quick access to the Capital and its mana. Besides, he had a feeling Aisling would want to return here soon, and he needed a way to collect Evindal, Luc and Deverell.

  “Aye, I got some ideas lad. Leave it with me. Assumin’ it does what I think it does, ya best off activatin’ it somewhere else. Don’t want anyone who can sense tha’ kind o thing linkin’ it to this house. Come on.”

  The streets were eerily quiet, everyone hiding in their houses and even the vagrants and homeless had vanished, wary of being picked up too close to any thoroughfares.

  “I thought there would be more guards,” commented Nate as they walked towards the small set of warehouses where he had painted so many artworks.

  “Ain’ enough of the bastards if they’re using them in the city proper. But no one wants ta be caught with their pants down when tha’ lot turn their attention to tha Slums.”

  The conversation ended and Nate wasn’t willing to try and talk, instead focusing on his sphere of awareness while he continued to draw two streams of mana from the mana gems in his Runic Gallery. One stream went into his own Mana Reserve, slowly refilling it, while the other was drawn into his Legendary Barrier Bracer, which was once more protecting him, even if it was at less than a third of its mana capacity. Frick had vanished into the ground and was currently swapping empty mana gems with filled ones from his mana collection station.

  Walking into the small warehouse compound, Nate marvelled at his own artworks all on proud display. He wasn’t sure they would still be untouched, but apart from a few small markings, they looked the same as when he had left the Capital, the Uncommon-tier paint managing to maintain itself better than he had hoped. Cutter approached the food shop, decorated with a painting of various foods flying on plates in the sky. The painting emanated the smell of some fresh foods and Nate smiled seeing the Smell Sigil embedded in it was still working.

  Cutter thumped on the door a few times and a moment later a clatter was heard from upstairs before footsteps came thumping down some stairs and finally, a minute later, the door opened a crack.

  “Cutter, you old bastard. What the fuck are you doing out at this hour with the City in an uproar? You trying to get got? And who the fuck is the rich kid?” grumbled an old woman.

  “Mags, the lad be ya artistic benefactor an’ I need the room. Ya know tha one. No questions.”

  Mags glanced between the two of them, her visible eye flicking back and forth before she pulled the door close. A clattering of chain later and she swung the door open, ushering them inside.

  “Hurry up. Hope no one saw you. You know the way, Cutter, you salty bastard.”

  Cutter nodded, heading towards the back of the room, but Nate stopped as he sensed Mags touch his barrier near his shoulder.

  “Thank you, lad, for the painting. Always smells nice round here these days. Now get going.”

  Nate smiled slightly and quickly caught up to Cutter. Heading down some stairs, he found himself in a spacious slightly cooled storage area filled with crates and barrels. Walking to the back of the room, Cutter shoved some crates out of the way casually and Nate was reminded that the man was at least High-Gold and might be considered a Platinum. A moment later, after pressing in a stone sticking out of the wall, a door opened. Even with his heightened Perception, the work was seamless, and the door had swung open on silent hinges. No magic involved.

  Nate glanced at Cutter who gave him a sly smile, “This ought to do, lad. Welcome to tha Smugglers Nest.”

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