“Oh! I didn't mention that did I? It's not a big thing, we're just friends, Collette? She runs the ice manufactory at the Capital. She's living with me actually, but last I saw it the place was nearly the size of the King’s palace or the estate here. It's not like we're having to share a room. Who knows what she has it doing now. Petra Ward is there too. It's not a permanent thing. You know, with King’s week coming we all have to go back. I can put you all up there if you want? It's outside the south gate, but the trip to the palace isn't that bad. I'm going to throw a party of my own this year too, but you can go to the palace if you want, or stay with me for that. Since they're not declaring war right now or getting everyone pregnant anymore we should also invite Maria and Marvin… I guess.”
Tor grimaced and kept going, trying to keep Nita distracted from the fact that he'd slept with her sister. “Though I don't think they should do more than swear fealty several times and grovel a bit this year and probably next. Marvin getting Princess Veronica pregnant is not popular with the royal family right now, as you might imagine. Me either as far as that goes, kind of ruined my engagement to her. The Prince may say some nasty things to Marvin over that, after Alphonse apologizes to Maria. He doesn't know he's doing that yet, but if he doesn't, I'll sneak into his room at night and shave his eyebrows off.”
Funny thing, the field didn't blink at all on that one. Tor hadn't known he felt that strongly on the matter, but it seemed that a certain Prince needed to step the heck up, or he was going to look funny for a long while.
Nita's eyes danced and her mouth opened in way that his body started to respond to on its own. She didn't even question that he'd slept with Collette, probably assuming he would in the future too, thanks to the messed up way nobles ran their relationships. Well, Nita could sleep with who she chose too, so it was fair enough. He didn't feel jealous about that, like he thought he would. Was he adapting to this strange world then? A little?
It was an amazing thing, an almost perfect moment for him. He felt accepted as Nita sat looking at him. Like he was something good, and not a troll at all.
He felt fine. Happy. Complete.
The men attacked hard and fast, hitting him from four sides at once without any warning at all. Nita was in the way of one, who tried to hit her with a blue beam of light, an electric weapon. Tried being the operative word. Her shield hadn't been on, but Tor triggered it before the beam hit, slapping his left hand to her chest before he did anything else at all, pushing her away. The shields locked somehow and… twisted as the force of him hitting her chest tried to flow into the ground. Painfully for him. The impact on her went neatly into the ground, but his hand and arm wrenched around suddenly with a cracking sound that could only be a bone breaking. It wasn't as quiet as Tor figured it would be, the other time he'd broken a bone he'd barely even noticed the sound at all.
He screamed. It hurt and there was no time to kill the pain or even prepare for it. Sometimes you just had to deal, and no trick was going to save you.
“Run away!” He screamed, the chant that Kolb had drummed into him for years, but this time it wasn't about him, the others needed to run. At Queen’s day the seven Larval's had been taken out, but killed over twenty nobles, Royal Guards and warriors first. Most of them combat giants. Most of those killed with nothing more than knives. The brave man Duke Winchester, who'd fought to protect Tor while he stopped the death dust in the air, had died, desperately clinging to the attacker even as his guts slid to the ground. It had been Smythe that had saved him then, Tor was told. He alone had taken out three of the men, using a military grade shield and Not-flyer, ramming them at over sixty miles per hour. Varley had taken one that way too, figuring it out from watching Smythe on the fly. Once they were down others finished the work, but without those two the whole thing would have gone a lot differently.
These people were mainly commoners from in town, unshielded and without training of note at all in fighting. No one walked around armed in Warden. No one but him. Even the guards here only carried little wooden clubs. They’d never needed more.
Not until that day.
No explosions took place this time, thank god. No nanos spread into the air either. Tor backpedaled, the assassins focusing on him alone it seemed so far. Good. They weren't hurting him, broken hand aside. Now if people would just get away he could start fighting in earnest and make this stop. He did trigger his Not-flyer and pulled the weapon he kept at his side all the time now, or at least bedside. He even took it into the shower with him.
It was white stone and glowing multicolored sigils, looking kind of pretty and festive he thought. He had to do it with his left hand, broken or not, but now he could focus a little, which meant that he could manage. It hurt, but he'd dealt with worse. As he got the men to follow him onto the dance floor one tried to blind him with an intense light, like Smythe had. It poured into the ground, running like water, flowing around him in damp looking brilliance towards the only direction that he'd deemed really safe for such things. It was a ruby red cascade, the beam coming in hot and leaving that way, making the grass smoke, but dancing over his skin, a quarter inch away, leaving him untouched.
Pretty.
The men looked identical to Dorgal Sorvee's friend from school and no doubt Maria Ward's lover, Laval. Which all things considered was about as stupid a name as could have been come up with. Laval the Larval? Moronic. The killer, one of them, switched aim and tried for Bonita instead. Obviously they were friends, so killing her would distract him, right?
That made sense. If you were amoral, evil and had no sense of ethical behavior or honor at all. Perfect for a super-killer clone Tor guessed. It had no more effect on her than it had him.
“Nita! Run away! Go. They want me for some reason… Possibly my fashion sense? Since nothing else seems reasonable at all. Everyone go!” Even with a shield on, they'd probably kill him eventually. Like the Royal Guard, they didn't seem to stop, and were both hard to kill and fast. A lot faster than he was, possible faster than was strictly human. Tor was bobbing around at over forty miles an hour and they were side stepping him as if it were a child's game. Apparently they'd noticed how well that technique had worked before, and learned.
Even though they weren't there at the time? However that worked, they didn't let him hit them no matter how hard he tried.
Without saying anything, without a sound that Tor noticed, all four men suddenly turned and sprinted towards the main table, everyone else had fled, except for Countess Ward and the three Larvals with her. For a split second, a time so fast that he nearly missed it, Tor wondered if she was the one attacking them all, in one of those stupidly over complex plans nobles made up, because massive amounts of sex and parties weren't enough to really keep them busy. As a rule, the royals all needed to get some hobbies, or at least useful jobs to kill time. It would be safer all around.
They held her with not one, but two knives to her throat, pointed to take out the veins and arteries on the sides of her neck with a twitch. A sudden move from either of the Larval would kill her. When he stopped and focused on the scene, just as the others surrounded her with their bodies, facing outward. Tor could see her fear.
He could feel it. It poured from her field in powerful waves.
So, it wasn't her plan then? Good. It would have been embarrassing to have helped her just to have it be another mistake.
Pointing the weapon, he waited for them, one of them at least, to speak. Eerily, they spoke as a group. Multiple voices in perfect time. Did they think as one too? Tor reached out to see, and almost passed out from the sickening shock of it. Their minds, their fields, were alien, so different from what he knew that he almost couldn't understand what they were. Then again, he didn't have to, did he?
“Put the weapon down and surrender your life and we'll let your woman go.”
Oh.
Was that all they wanted?
And they thought he was with Maria freaking Ward? Brilliant of them.
Different or not, he knew what they all thought then and said it out loud so everyone else could hear, those not smart enough, or too brave, to get out of there while he and Maria bought them time.
“And then you'll kill us all. Right, we get the idea, you're assassins, it's what you do. No promise of safe passage will win any of us free. It's run or fight and fighting means death without our weapons and shields. Got it. Any other ideas? I won’t throw away lives just to try and save a single person you plan to kill anyway.”
The one with the knife on the young Countess’s delicate neck sliced her enough to make her whimper.
“You.” They almost sang the word. It was creepy. They were creepy.
“We let these others go and kill you. They leave now and our sweet little kitten-flower goes unharmed. If not,
