As expected, Fyre brightened up.
“I have to say, teleportation was more uncomfortable than I expected,” Anna complained. “Does it get better if you’re expecting it?”
“No,” Nathan and Narime both said. The fox eyed him, then shrugged.
“I took Anna the moment the fighting broke out,” Narime explained. “As such, I only saw the aftermath. But those uniforms paint a dark picture, Nathan. This looks like an attempt by the Nationalists to assassinate Anna.”
Fyre nodded enthusiastically, before cocking her head and looking at Nathan expectantly.
Everybody else waited to hear what he had to say, save for one person.
“It’s too obvious. Why would a duogem Champion wear the uniform of their master during an assassination?” Sunstorm said flatly. “If the attackers can get their hands on that many Imperial Army uniforms, why not wear unmarked clothes beneath them?”
Narime pursed her lips. “You think it’s a setup.”
“Who is Folker?” Sunstorm asked Nathan.
Anna butted in and said, “One of the leaders of the Nationalist faction. A southern powerbroker with close ties to Tharban. Did they say his name?”
“They called the assassin by his name,” Sunstorm replied.
“Wow. That is obvious.” Anna frowned. “Then who is behind it?”
“Somebody with access to a duogem Champion, and a rare one at that. I’ve never seen moonstone used for gemming,” Sunstorm said. “Seraph said it’s only really used in Falmir.”
An uncomfortable silence filled the carriage. It trundled along the streets, taking them closer and closer to the palace.
“Nathan,” Narime said. “You know something, don’t you? That’s why you’ve been so silent.”
All eyes turned to him.
He nodded. “I do. The Champion is from Falmir. Her name is Erica Reed, and she serves Bastion Gareth Pike. If she hadn’t used both of her gem abilities, I wouldn’t have known it was her.”
Anna’s eyes bulged. “But that’s—” She composed herself, and scowled. “You think Falmir tried to assassinate me?”
“It might not be the first time,” Narime said. Her expression held a wariness that hadn’t been present before Nathan admitted he recognized the assassin.
“What?”
Nathan sighed. “Kuda thinks that Princess Charlotte’s Champion intended to kill both you and Alice during the cascade earlier this year.”
“Fucking hell, Nathan,” Anna spat at him. “Do you plan on dropping something bigger? Did you knock up Alice, and that’s why you’re staying at the palace?”
He glared at her, and she had the self-awareness to wince and mumble an apology.
“Falmir’s interference isn’t the only notable observation,” Nathan said. He looked at Sunstorm expectantly.
She raised an eyebrow in return and looked at the others. “Did nobody else spot the obvious?”
“I was preoccupied,” Narime said.
Sen shrugged and gave Sunstorm a bright smile, which caused the olive-skinned Champion to blush and look away. Nothing else was said.
With a sigh, Sunstorm explained, “Fine. The interruption lasted ages, and had been taking place for days. But the guards showed up within minutes once we intervened. Plus, those two Champions just happened to be here today? The Empire was either involved or were springing their own trap on Falmir.”
Anna’s eyes widened. “I’d wondered why the Army didn’t do anything. The Emperor has military authority over Aleich, given the amount of nobles here, so it was strange that this could happen under his nose.”
Nathan considered how the invasion of the Federation had played out. Everything had neatly supported Emperor Gorthal’s plans. Now Falmir staged a botched assassination attempt that publicly framed the Nationalists? Convenient.
The issue was: if Falmir were working with the Emperor, why would they have attempted to kill either Anna or Alice during the cascade? At the time, Anna was a convenient noble for both Nathan and Leopold to hold behind. And Alice is the Emperor’s beloved granddaughter.
Schemes within schemes. Nathan didn’t know what to make of the situation. It was possible that someone else with influence in the Imperial Army arranged things, he supposed.
Despite himself, he recalled some of the words that Torneus said, right before he was captured.
“Gorthal is slowly realizing that he’s being cornered, but he’s played his hand poorly throughout his life,” Torneus had said while drinking his ouzo.
Everybody was in this for themselves. Nathan needed to remember that. Not every scheme was linked. Sometimes, players in this intricate game acted for their own purpose. The Emperor might be working with Falmir, but they might also want to overthrow him.
“Nathan, how did you recognize the Champion?” Narime asked. “And why do you know who she works for? I’ve never even heard of this Gareth. You’re knowledgeable, but this is a bridge too far.”
He winced. Gareth was one of his oldest, truest friends from his world. The two of them had fought side by side until Gareth met his end during the fall of Trafaumh.
Both Anna and Narime looked at Nathan expectantly. The other girls winced, their eyes looking between the fox and Nathan.
Nathan wasn’t sure if he should be open in front of Fyre. But he also didn’t want to lie to Anna. For now, he decided to let Fyre know the general gist of his secrets. That did mean he’d need to deal with her sooner rather than later. Making her his Champion would be necessary.
“I know it for the same reason I know a lot of other things,” he said slowly. “I’ve kept my secrets for good reason. It might be time to tell all of you—soon.”
Anna’s eyes widened. “No, Nathan, your oath—”
“Isn’t related to these secrets, Anna. It’s been convenient to hide behind, but the reason I haven’t told anyone is because of the danger, not because I’ll be damned.”
Although Nathan was damned anyway.
“I suspected this wasn’t a Bastion secret, given even Seraph doesn’t know it,” Narime said drily. “It’s your most mysterious secret, and one that I can tell that Sen and Sunstorm already know.”
The two Champions looked away as Narime shot glares at them.
“Fei knows as well. She worked it out herself,” Nathan said.
“What!?” three voices snapped in chorus. Narime, Anna, and Fyre were in disbelief.
“Fei? Our cute little catgirl who eats half a cow’s worth of meat each day, fidgets restlessly during lectures, and loses all motivation when she hasn’t fucked you in the last week?” Narime said, her voice loaded with disbelief. “That Fei? She worked out your secret?”
“Yes.”
“Should I just start guessing wildly?” Narime asked sarcastically.
“Fei got it first try. In fact, she worked it out before she was gemmed and proved it to me,” Nathan said.
Narime’s eyes nearly popped out of her skull. Anna giggled, hiding her mouth behind one hand.
Fyre’s expression was different, however. Her shock gave way to pride. She smirked at nothing, her eyes locked on a corner of the carriage.
“You’re forbidden from telling me until I make my guess,” Narime said.
“I want to talk about it before we leave, so make it quick.”
With the serious topic finished, they talked about other things for the remainder of the trip. Soon enough, the carriage rolled to a stop.
The doors opened, and Anna’s knights greeted them with salutes. Their armor bore scratches, and one of their heads was bandaged. Despite that, they helped Anna out of the carriage. Everybody else dismounted without aid, although a knight tried to help Nathan.
They stood within the outer grounds of the palace. Like the rest of Aleich, there wasn’t a dedicated section of the city cordoned off by a huge wall. Instead, the palace loomed over the business hub of the city.
While the palace itself was walled off, it stood on raised ground and man
y of its buildings were open to the public. Their carriage had rolled through one of the checkpoints and parked in the designated undercover space. Imperial soldiers patrolled the grounds, but they waved and smiled at the merchants and nobles walking up the steps to the palace itself.
Outside the wall, a paved boulevard encircled the palace. A mass of well-dressed merchants and nobles moved between buildings, leaving room for passing carriages and wagons. Banks, merchant guilds, mercenary offices, and trading houses lined the street.
“Alice said she’d be in the throne room,” Anna said. “We should head into the Imperial Palace.”
“Which building?” Sen asked, eyes wide as she stared at the palatial complex.
“The one in the center with the gigantic statue of Omria over the entrance.”
Sen nodded, but continued looking around as they walked up the steps.
“Why is it so big?” she mumbled.
“Because it used to be the center of the largest nation in the world, and where Omria herself resided,” Nathan said, staring up at the robed and winged statue of the goddess. “The Anfang Empire once controlled all of Doumahr west of the Gharrick Mountains. The palace still radiates with her presence.”
“Is that what this strange feeling is?” Sunstorm said.
“The Imperial Palace is akin to the domain of a Bastion,” Narime explained. “The Bastion who controls it can manipulate reality within it, just like Nathan does near his binding stones. How it works is one of the closest guarded secrets of the Empire.”
“So, what is the secret?” Anna asked, looking at Nathan expectantly.
He shrugged. When the Empire fell in his world, the palace had been reduced to ruins. When he and other Bastions found it, the stonework still radiated with power. Mages studied the ruins, but discovered nothing.
“I don’t know,” he said. “The palace isn’t a binding stone, but it grants the same power as one. The only conclusion is that it’s an artifact left behind by Omria herself, and the secret to it is one she left to the Emperors of the Anfang Empire.”
Right now, Bastion Maylis had control over the palace. Nathan needed to stay on her good side.
They stepped up to the double door entrance to the Imperial Palace. The guards now bore the golden emblem of the Emperor himself—they were the royal guards, not the Imperial Army. One of them pulled a lever. The doors slowly ground open.
Once inside, they noted how empty the place was.
“Isn’t the Diet in pre-session?” Nathan said.
“Every college has separate buildings in the complex,” Anna said as she strode forward, Fyre beside her. “We only use the grand hall when the Emperor needs to be present, or for a million other procedural reasons.”
Ah, bureaucracy. Nathan didn’t ask about the other reasons. The Imperial Diet was a complex beast. It had to be, given it was a mechanism that brought together nobles across the entire Empire and gave them the ability to influence the entire nation.
Nathan wanted as little to do with it as possible. But ignoring it completely was unwise.
He refused to repeat the mistakes of his past.
“The actual throne room is around the corner, behind this one. Alice will need to let us in,” Anna said.
Walking forward, they looked around. Nathan’s Champions oohed and aahed over the monolithic size of the palace. Even Nathan was impressed. He had implanted memories of this place, but they paled in comparison to seeing it himself.
This was a work of the Watcher Omria. A building of a vastness that even mages struggled to create. The highest point of the hall was over twenty stories tall, and the palace had towers that dwarfed that height. Every block of stone in the building exuded powerful magic.
Shouting interrupted Nathan’s appreciation of the palace. He turned, hand on his sword. His Champions took up defensive positions in front of him, while Fyre protected Anna.
The entrance to the hall had been closing, and now it stopped with a juddering boom. A moment later, it began creaking and grinding open again.
The man responsible for this was none other than Tharban himself. Nathan’s father had come to see his son at last.
Chapter 8
Tharban rammed the doors open with his raw strength. The gears screeched in fury as they desperately fought against him. The doors weighed countless tons and were huge blocks of steel-plated wood filled with ancient magic, so they didn’t even flex in response to Tharban’s push.
Slowly, the doors ground open again. The royal guards protested behind the giant, and eventually they managed to get the door to open properly. Near Nathan, a small cluster of guards formed.
“Third time in a fucking year he’s tried to break the door,” one of them muttered.
Tharban strode toward Nathan. There was little physical resemblance between the two men, despite being father and son. Both had black hair, a square jaw, were clean-shaven, and were tall. That was about it.
Where Nathan was built from lean muscle, Tharban was a bear of a man. Even his hair made him look like a bear. An unkind person might suggest this implied something about Nathan’s parentage.
Given Tharban’s short temper, that person would likely make that implication from as far away as possible.
Nurevia followed behind Tharban. She smirked at Nathan, and invitingly ran a finger from her crotch to her lips. The dark elf had made her interest in him very clear earlier this year.
Stopping short of Nathan, Tharban glared down at him.
Nathan returned the glare with a stare of bland indifference.
Around them, the guards and Champions shifted uneasily. At least one guard ran off, presumably to contact his superior or possibly Maylis herself. None of the Champions drew weapons. Anna remained behind Fyre.
Nurevia licked her lips, her eyes oozing with lust as she looked between both men.
Tharban grunted and looked over Nathan. His eyes narrowed at Fyre.
“You’ve recruited another of these breeding sluts?” Tharban snarled. “Do you plan to fill your castles with abominations after you knock them all up? I’m guessing that catgirl bitch of yours isn’t here because she’s too big to fit it in a carriage, after all.”
Nathan could hear a pin drop. The hall fell completely silent.
The royal guards held themselves back, but their fury made itself known. Heated glares punched into Tharban. Knuckles whitened on halberds and sheathed swords. Eyes bulged and veins nearly popped.
Although their armor hid it, many of the royal guards were beastkin. They normally tucked their ears into helmets and kept their tails curled under cloaks.
The officers made calming gestures, although at least one looked as if he might join in.
Nurevia looked around with a smirk and fingered her weapons.
“It’s nice to see you too, Tharban,” Nathan said drily.
Tharban sneered. “Still no spine. I insult your woman and you won’t even defend her? You’re even more of a bitch than the women pathetic enough to fuck you.”
Damn. Nathan had to admit that Tharban knew how to start a fight. These were some good fighting words. Nathan privately kept them in mind, in case he needed to provoke somebody in the future.
But trying to kill a count in the palace was treason, no matter how many times Tharban insulted him. This was a setup. Nathan wasn’t some young pup who seethed every time somebody pricked his pride.
All eyes were on Nathan. They expected him to hit back or do something.
In truth, he wanted to laugh at Tharban. That might make things worse. Better to avoid Tharban for now, and flatten him later, when things were less political.
“There’s nothing to defend her from. Nobody cares about your opinion, Tharban,” Nathan said, still staring at his father with a bland expression. “But they do care about mine, and they already know what it is.”
Tharban’s hands balled into fists as he glared at Nathan.
For several long moments, nothing was exchanged other than g
lares.
Which Nathan found odd.
Fyre wasn’t Nathan’s Champion, and Tharban should be able to sense that. Champions were imprinted with the magic of their Bastions. Nathan’s wasn’t on Fyre. It should have been Tharban’s next point of attack, given he was trying to go after his women.
Or maybe Tharban didn’t care, because Fyre was a beastkin.
“They’ll learn soon enough whose opinion they should value,” Tharban boomed. He stepped forward, so that he towered over Nathan. “You’ve made a name for yourself with the help of Leopold’s bitches and Gorthal’s web of lies. But nothing gets done in Aleich without a real pair of balls. You left those behind in my county.”
Tharban slammed his hand forward, palm open, intending to knock Nathan over.
Instantly, Nathan was struck with deja vu. One of his implanted memories flared to life, reminding him of his past before he arrived in this world.
He saw Tharban standing over him. This was right before the first war with Trafaumh, and before Nathan went to the academy to train as a Bastion. People stood around him—advisors and friends who had helped Nathan run the county for years. Nurevia stood in a corner, watching in excitement.
Tharban reached out with his hand and bowled Nathan over. His father insulted him, called him weak for helping beastkin, and for not training more soldiers.
The crowd shifted. Then Tharban looked at them, and they jeered at Nathan.
That had been what turned the Nathan Straub of this world into a Bastion. Anger seethed within him, boiling over as he joined the academy.
Back in the present, Nathan ignored the sudden surge of anger. Tharban’s hand rammed into his chest.
Nathan didn’t even flinch.
Tharban blinked. His hand was pressed into Nathan’s chest, which hadn’t moved a fraction of an inch from the impact. The giant had the strength to force open the palace doors, but couldn’t even ruffle Nathan’s clothing.
With a loud grunt, Tharban shoved Nathan. The force was immense, and Nathan felt pain blossom in his chest. His ribs creaked. He responded by pumping magical power into his body, so that he remained perfectly still.
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