Chapter 37: 13.5: The Royal Ball V

“What the hell?” Alex said, half-shouting. “What is this?”

Almost immediately, shields manifested themselves at one door, an oily mixture of colors solidifying into translucent red and green after a moment.

The jester was in play, then.

At the other end of the room, though, nearer to the dance floor, nobles were scattering in panic and people were coming in unchecked. There weren't as many as a true massive mob would’ve had, perhaps twenty or twenty-five of them funnelling through one massive set of double doors. Around the same size as the cell of commoners I’d bumped into earlier today, if I had to guess. I squinted at them, paying close attention to their features, but nobody bore any similarities to the civilians I’d ran into. Another group, then. A quick glance at the mob behind the jester’s shield also revealed that they probably weren’t my group. How many rebelling cells of commoners were there? At least three, but logic said that if different groups were attacking at different times and yet they’d dedicated two groups for one assault, there were a lot more than that. That would explain why I had somehow randomly managed to run into a group, then, if their numbers were large.

They were armed haphazardly, wielding anything from a plank of wood to a sword that probably hadn’t been used in generations to a hunting pistol. Few of them had guns, but those that did raised them as they stormed in.

Before I had finished formulating an answer to Alex’s question, a crack-crack-crack whipped through the air, the sound of the shots like thunder in the enclosed space. They weren’t trained with the weapons, and their aim was fairly poor as a result, but there were a lot of people in this room. Even the worst shots wouldn’t miss every shot if they were aiming at fish in a barrel.

A noble fell, spinning with the momentum of the bullet that had hit them, then another person. Only two hits from the first volley of shots, one of them a dancer and the other one of the musicians.

“Fuck,” Jasmine cursed, looking over her shoulder as she started to sprint away. “Cover me.”

“They’re enemies,” I told Alex, my mind fully finished switching gears.

I’d been having a great time just now, but I could deal with having that postponed. There were people to remove, after all.

“No shit,” he grunted, but I was already gone.

Thirty meters from us to the dance floor, another thirty between that and the incoming group, I assessed. The room was roughly rectangular, and while there was a little cover offered by the pillars holding up the walls, neither Jasmine nor I were using them.

I was slower than Jasmine, but that was to be expected when I was doing my best to not trip over my dress. The fact that it was looser around the legs did help with mobility, but it was still long and my steps had to be measured carefully.

A traditional Ceretian shield would never form more than a meter or two away from one’s body, so I had to improvise. Instead, I thrust my magic out, only half-forming a frame before I started dumping fuel into it. Rather than hope it would hold, I exerted my will over my magic, casting it out from my hands ordering it to hold an impenetrable form several meters ahead rather than directly in front of me.

I was half-successful. The effort did create a shield further away from my body, but it was incomplete, amorphous and weak. The oily black shield would be enough for now, though. Not a moment too soon, either. Another crack of thunder ripped through the room belatedly—a gunner had failed to shoot with the volley, it seemed—and my shield rippled as the bullet spent itself against the magic. I felt my reserves tank, almost tripping as energy suddenly drained itself from my body, but the shield held. It was far weaker than it should’ve been, but then I shouldn’t have expected anything better from an unstructured replacement of a structured spell.

“Thank you!” Jasmine shouted.

She wasn’t making her way towards the enemies, I saw, but rather the people who’d been downed. Jasmine was running at an angle slightly away from the doors, and I could see the downed musician at the end of her path. Both the noble and the musician had been abandoned by the others here, but the musician was closer to the mob.

“I’m going to need to fight!” I shouted at Jasmine. “How long do you want me to keep the shield up?”

I moved the shield, finding it surprisingly easy to continue manipulating the unstructured magic in the air, and I missed a step as something long and sharp impacted the not-quite-a-spell, draining more of my reserves.

“Leave them alive!” Jasmine said. “I can take care of myself now!”

She had full on sprinted in a dress, which I had to be impressed by. Jasmine was five or ten meters ahead of me, already crouched down next to the musician, creating her own shield to cover her as she began healing. It seemed that her secret wasn’t really a secret with the nobles here—that, or she made exceptions about it if someone’s life was in danger.

Whatever the case, Jasmine had just given me an impossible task. Fight the commoners and cow them without killing them?

“Just checking, you know who my oath is to, right?” I asked. Jasmine didn’t reply, too busy healing her victim.

“Fuck,” I muttered.

“Lily! We’re with you!” Alex yelled, as far behind me as I was from Jasmine. “We’re fighting?”

“Non-lethally, apparently,” I said back, my voice raised. “I don’t know—“

While we’d been running, the mob had prepared themselves again, and I cut myself off as I heard the telltale clicks of several guns being readied.

Shit. I had no qualms about killing a commoner to save myself, as much as I might sympathize with their cause, but Jasmine did and I didn’t want her to finish healing just to see me wading through a field of corpses.

“Sorry, Jasmine,” I muttered, forming unstructured magic. I was going to have to kill at least one.

“I got it,” Lukas said from behind me. I slowed and turned my head to look at him.

He had been kneeling, and now he stood, finishing a movement of his arm with a flourish. The cloak and tunic of a House Varga guard hadn’t been interrupting his movement, but he hadn’t caught up to me, and I saw now that it was because he had been preparing a spell on the ground.

A circle of brown energy flashed bright and disappeared, and with it I saw five streaks of dirt start speeding over and through the ground.

The earth between the commoner mob and us rumbled, and then a dirt wall shot up from the ground, dividing them from us. I couldn’t tell how thick it was, but it was quite a bit taller than me and it looked as solid as the constructs Lukas had provided for sparring a few weeks back, the earth packed and hardened.

Once again, I heard the ear-splitting noise of multiple shots being fired at the same time, and the wall absorbed them all, not even a crack visible from our end.

Someone slammed into the wall, the impact audible even through the solid layer of earth. It held steady, and I heard a cry of pain from the other end. We had some time, then, but it wouldn’t be too long before they started figuring out they could boost each other up and over it.

“That’s all I’ve got for now,” Lukas admitted. “I can maybe manage some smaller spells, but my magic capacity isn’t at its peak right now. Alex?”

“I’m ready to go,” Alex said, the dark-skinned noble rising to his full height behind me. “Non-lethal only, right?”

“That is what Jasmine asked for,” I said reluctantly. “I can’t really do non-lethal. I’ll be trying to shield, nothing else with my magic.”

“Works with me,” Alex said. “I can use my paralysis spell, but it might take some time to set in. I need line of sight and cover.”

“I can handle that,” I said. “Ready?”

“I am,” Alex said. “Lukas. A ramp, if you would.”

“Of course, my liege,” Lukas said lightheartedly, his fingers dancing across the air. The magic diagram was a lot smaller this time, the black-haired man obviously worn out from his first spell.

From the part of the wall closest to us, more solid earth extruded itself from the construct, forming a rough, steep ramp for the two of us. I went first, and I decided to experiment with my shield spell. It probably wasn’t the time or place, but these commoners were a relatively small threat to us and I wanted to test it against a real target.

I formed the frame as properly as I could, but I did it loosely, like a lid half closed. When I poured the fuel into the spell, it ballooned out to fill the less rigid frame. I kept my control as firm as I could over the mass of magic as I added the spark, trying to visualize it as the divine communication that Nishi had implied it was.

I was mostly successful, this time, creating another amorphous shield that I could move around and away from myself with some effort. It seemed tougher than the last, to my senses.

We would be dealing with commoners armed with both firearms and melee weapons, neither of which should be able to deal lasting damage to us as long as they didn’t hit a critical spot and we had access to healing in Jasmine. Still, I resolved to keep my shield broad enough to protect a five-meter expanse in front of us. It wouldn’t do if Alex got shot while disabling the mob.

“How long?” I asked as I stepped off of the ramp onto the wall proper.

The wall was almost a meter thick, looking at the top, and it was almost three meters tall. No wonder Lukas had run out of magic after casting it.

“Three minutes, maybe?” Alex said, unsure. “Maybe four or five? I haven’t cast it on large groups of people before, I just know that it’ll take time to reach maximum effectiveness.”

As he made it to the top of the wall, the mob beneath us started noticing us, angry shouts and curses sounding out from a few of its members.

Somebody threw a length of metal pipe at us, its surface distorted by nails that had been pounded into it. It would’ve gone wide even if I hadn’t used a shield, but I had it up anyway so it bounced off harmlessly.

“And how long before it becomes safe to enter?” I asked, ignoring the crowd beneath us. “Can you make it ignore certain people?”

“I—“ Alex frowned. “Are you planning on going in?”

“Hey! Fucking pay attention!” someone shouted from beneath us.

I turned my head, looking down at the speaker.

A few of them had come closer to the wall. Four of them, by my count, and two of them were supporting one man with a butcher’s knife, and as I watched they boosted him up and allowed him to step on their shoulders. When he shakily stood, he stood tall enough to swing both his arms over the side of the wall. They’d selected a spot more than five meters away from us, wisely choosing to avoid the area where I’d set up the shield, and now the man started clambering onto the wall, pulling himself up.

It was slow going, and I strolled over unhurriedly. The commoners underneath the man noticed, calling out warnings, but he wasn’t in a great position to do anything.

He heaved himself up onto his belly as I walked, and with that one hand was freed to use the knife. The commoner braced one arm on the ground, and—

“There’ll be none of that,” I said idly, and I sprinted the last few steps, winding up my legs.

My roundhouse kick came at a low angle, a graceful, practiced arc of a motion that connected with the unlucky man’s head. I followed through with the motion, delivering enough force in that one attack to knock him off the wall. I heard something crack in his face, followed by two heavy impacts as he first hit the side of the wall and then the ground.

“Ow,” I muttered. My foot stung where I’d kicked him. The flats that Jasmine had picked out for me were stylish, but they were unfortunately not the most suited for combat.

His knife clattered down on top of the wall as he fell. I knelt down and tossed it back, careful to avoid accidentally killing anyone.

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“Fuck you, noble whore!” one of the men who’d been boosting my now-unarmed victim up to the wall shrieked. “I’m going to—“

I tuned him out, striding back to Alex with purpose.

“Progress on the spell?” I asked.

He was murmuring, drawing out bright green figures in the air, so I assumed it was a work in progress.

A few moments later, green fumes appeared in his hands, lazily floating around the sides of my shield to form an ominous cloud of magic above the villagers, slowly falling upon them. The cries of anger that had blended into a general mass of discontent changed in tone, the mob moving towards panic. A couple of them turned to try to retreat, only to realize that the wall Lukas had formed was a full circle, blocking them off at the doors as well.

I looked at them, cocking my head.

“Yes, I can exclude you,” Alex said.

“Pardon?”

“Your earlier question. I assume you want to go down there. I have control over the spell while it’s forming, so I told it to ignore your magic signature and your immediate surroundings. Your oath is rather unique, so it should be able to stay clear.”

“Appreciate it,” I said. “Stay safe.”

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

In lieu of an answer, I jumped down from the wall, rolling to absorb my momentum. Nobody had tried to break the wall here, thank the gods, so I only had to dust myself off a little bit. My dress wasn’t ruined, not yet, and if Alex’s magic was avoiding me then hopefully it would stay that way.

“What the fuck?” Alex exclaimed, mirroring the reactions of the commoners on the ground. “Lily, what are you doing?”

“They’re going to realize they can boost each other up to escape soon enough,” I said almost absentmindedly, not even turning back to him. “I’m going to stop them.”

“You don’t need to!” he shouted. “We only need to capture some of them!”

I did turn to Alex this time, ignoring the haphazard charge of the two men that had been closest to the wall. “These people interrupted a nice night. I’d like them to explain themselves.”

Maybe he could sense the venom behind those words, because Alex didn’t speak again afterwards, returning to managing his spell.

The visibility wasn’t great, a thick fog of magical green fumes having settled over the entire makeshift arena. Still, I could see two men sprinting towards me, their hands empty. They’d been too busy helping their buddy up the wall to bring their own weapons. A glance to one side confirmed that the third one of them was kneeling on the ground, trying to comfort the guy I’d kicked off.

Alright. These two were burly, probably construction workers or something, but that wasn’t an issue when I had magic and they didn’t.

I formed a couple small threads of unstructured magic and controlled them, ordering them to arc out from my fingers to the floor just in front of my would-be assailants. A magic missile, essentially, except it felt a lot more natural than the spell would’ve.

They were nearly within arm’s reach of me when my magic detonated, making contact with the floor and utterly ruining it, marble vanishing into thin air. It wasn’t much, and I had to give the men credit—they did try to avoid it.

Still, though, they lost their balance, and that was when I struck. I couldn’t fully discount them here, since they were large and strong and I was less so, but isolating fights while their guard was down made it a lot easier.

First, the one on the right. I sprinted towards him, transferring my momentum into a front kick to the gut, raising my knee and foot up and striking out with it like a coiled snake. I made contact with something soft and fleshy, and from the pained grunt my mark made, it had been hard enough to take him out of the fight for now.

Not content to stop at that, I struck him in the throat with my palm, holding back enough to keep myself from accidentally damaging him to the point of death. My palm hurt with the slap of flesh on flesh, but he came out far worse for wear, clutching his throat and stumbling onto his knees.

One down. Onto the second. He’d regained his balance now, and he looked more pissed than ever.

I reached for my hair, then thought better of it. Jasmine had gifted me a knife, but given the chance to use one I was too likely to accidentally kill one of these idiots, and she wouldn’t want that.

“You piece of shit,” the second man snarled. “You’ll pay for this, whore.”

“Your overalls are a size too small for you,” I commented. “Should probably look into that.”

He growled in rage and charged me, his arms in front of him.

I ducked under his tackle and dodged to one side, sweeping one leg under his as he passed me by. The man tripped over me, his momentum forcing him into a messy fall.

“Sloppy,” I chided, rising to my feet and looking down at him. He was in an awkward position, having rolled to a stop. He was facing the ceiling, and he brought his hands to his face as I slowly stepped to him. His movements were visibly slowing, I noticed, Alex’s magic setting faster in the wounded.

I stood over him, thinking for a second, and then I kicked his legs apart. He was getting weaker fast, unable to resist me.

I stomped on him, aiming for the sensitive parts at his pelvis.

“For all your talk about whores,” I told him, unheeding of his pained cry, “It looks like you ended up being the one with your legs spread.”

Ugh. I was not good at bantering during a fight. I’d leave that to someone else.

The fog was getting thicker now, and the remainder of the mob was moving noticeably slower. The crowd seemed torn, some of them moving to attack me and others trying to run away, a small group of them already at the far wall.

I couldn’t have that. I tried the same loose-frame construction that I’d done with my shield earlier, this time making the motions for a magic missile.

This one, unfortunately, did not return nearly so neat a result. As I poured the fuel in and sparked it, the frame broke under the force of my magic, and it returned to its amorphous, unstructured form.

Fine then. I would do this the hard way. I condensed the blob into a sphere the size of a watermelon, then sent it arcing high above the heads of the crowd. It left a clear path in its wake, annihilating Alex’s magic where it flew.

I controlled my magic carefully, pulling on the comfortable coldness of my oath and keeping it from getting too close to any people. With a slight nudge, I sent the projectile flying into the far wall, limiting it in size to keep it from fully penetrating the wall and creating an exit.

The far wall was largely obscured now, so I didn’t have the best view of it, but I could hear earth crashing to the ground, followed by confused shouts a second later. As it collided, I started construction on a second shield, stealing a little magic away from the shield protecting Alex. Getting shot now would be suboptimal, to say the least.

“No running!” I shouted, projecting my voice across the area. “Unless you want more of that!”

The people that had been nervously preparing for a rush came to a decision and charged as one. They were slow, though, their charge no faster than a brisk walk. Alex’s magic was setting in faster than I’d thought it would.

Isolate my fights. It was the only way I would be able to defeat this many people at once, even if they were slowed. There was power in numbers.

I lightly jogged at an angle away from them, my path set to go around them and hit them from the back. Nobody shot at me, the gunmen either too afraid of hitting their friends or acknowledging the power of my shield.

Running at an angle away from them meant that they had to chase to keep up. They weren’t all chasing me at the same speed, though, and the group started to come apart, the space between them increasing.

I turned as I heard footsteps behind me, tossing out a punch, and I connected with a boy who couldn’t have been older than sixteen.

“Sorry,” I said, not meaning it, and I hit him again, knocking him to the ground. I hadn’t punched hard enough to put someone down for good, but the fumes were taking their toll and he did not get up again.

It was a simple process from there on, kiting the group and knocking down individuals. It didn’t take too long before they stopped moving on their own. I counted six more unfortunate victims before the mob started falling over, the paralytic in the fumes getting to them.

“All clear,” I shouted up to Alex. “Taking the shields down now!”

I let my magic dissipate, a sudden wave of exhaustion falling over me. A section of the wall peeled away, earth melting back into the ground like it had never been there, and Alex and I met up on the other side of Lukas’ spell.

On the other end of the room, the other mob had been immobilized. One or two of them were dead, blood strewn across the floor, and the others had been caught in a translucent field of energy that pinned them shoulder-to-shoulder into a tight space no larger than a small kitchen. They’d hit a few nobles themselves, but those were being given medical attention even as I watched.

The atmosphere was no less tense for it, though, and I found myself tensing up. There was something dangerous in the air, even after our assailants had been defeated. Nobles were standing to attention, clustered in the middle of the room where the fighting couldn’t reach, and it felt like there was a weight in that attention. People were looking at me and Alex, now, and there was something almost accusatory in their gaze.

“Friends, nobles, adventurers,” a voice that I recognized as Orchid’s said, his voice carrying across the entire ballroom, which had gone dead silent after we were done fighting. “We have been attacked.”

As obvious as his statement was, not a single voice spoke to mock him.

“Camellia, my friend here, has an emotion sense,” Orchid boomed.

“I do,” a high-pitched voice replied. “It has never failed me.”

“She tells me,” Orchid said, emphasizing every word. “That these attacks were not a crime of passion, but one assisted by one of us.”

That much was obvious too. How else would they have found the ballroom? How else would they have known that it was occupied?

“She tells me,” the noble repeated, “that the traitor is in this room.”

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