EPISODE II
Chapter 8: The Enforcer
One week has passed since the Battle of Kashyyyk….
At the Valkoran capital on Ockla Prime, Aiken Cremas, commonly known by his codename Arcidus, was practicing his marksmanship in his personal training grounds, firing at levitating targets with his blaster pistol. He did not miss a single shot.
As he was busy hitting his targets, a door opened behind him, revealing a slightly-hunched over humanoid figure wearing a black cloak and a cumbersome-looking mask with two blade-like fins on the edges. Arcidus impulsively turned around and shot him in his faceplate, but the figure barely reacted to the shot, only having a slight scorch mark on his mask.
"You have quite a lot of nerve to shoot at me," the figure spoke to him.
Arcidus swiftly placed his pistol back in his holster. "You shouldn't sneak up on me while I'm in the middle of target practice, Valkor, otherwise you wouldn't have a blast scorch on your mask."
"Cute, but you will either address me as 'Emperor Valkor', 'My Emperor', 'Master', or anything along those lines, and such behavior could be considered treasonous." Valkor then walked into the training room and approached Arcidus. "And speaking of treason, I've come to inform you that one of our allies, the Kur'Ada Equalists, have turned on us."
"I know. That news is one standard week old. Why are you telling me this now?"
"Oh come on, Arcy. Maesterus told me you were smart. I want you go over to their enclave on Alpheridies and kill them. Why haven't you done that already?"
"I'll do it whenever Maesterus tells me to." Arcidus then fired at another target. "Now, go away."
"Well, I'm ordering you to annihilate the Kur'Ada."
"That's too bad, 'Emperor', because your words mean nothing to me. I only serve Maesterus."
"There's something I don't think you understand, Arcidus: Maesterus serves me, so since you serve him, you serve me by extension."
"No… I don't think you understand. I serve Maesterus and Maesterus only, even if he isn't at the top of your pecking order."
Two red expressionless crystal-like eyes suddenly illuminated in the two hollow slits on Valkor's mask. Valkor then lifted his right arm from his cloak – revealing his armor-coated body and the metal claws on his fingers – and two thin oily black tendrils oozed out of the cracks in the plating near his elbow joint. The tendrils then lashed at Arcidus, grabbed him by the neck, lifted him off the floor and attempted to strangle him.
"Where's your patriotism, Arcidus?" Valkor asked him in a seething but somewhat mocking tone.
"Who said… I was… a patriot?" Arcidus stoically responded while trying to gasp for breath.
"Oh please, I can still tell you're afraid of me even with that mask on." One of the tips of the tentacles tried to position itself to crawl through the filter on Arcidus's mask. "It's all about what Maesterus says." Valkor told Arcidus mockingly. "Are you too stupid to stay alive? You couldn't even save your own life without his say-so! Come on! Use that Force trick on me! The one where you can set things on fire! I dare you! Because…" A licking sound then echoed in the room from no physically determinable source. "I'm getting very hungry."
Maesterus suddenly entered the room. "Emperor Valkor! What the hell are you doing to my apprentice?!"
Valkor then tilted his face towards Maesterus. "It seems your pet doesn't grasp the concept of the chain of command, Maesterus."
Maesterus commanded Arcidus. "Do as he says, Aiken. I don't want you getting yourself killed."
"As you wish, Master." Arcidus's red-tinted goggles flashed and Valkor's cloak suddenly caught fire. The tendrils grasping Arcidus's throat released him and retracted back into Valkor's arm.
"Arcidus!" Maesterus exclaimed in shock.
"He told me to set him on fire, so I did as he told me." Arcidus coolly replied.
Valkor promptly put out the fire on his cape. "I didn't think your pet had a sense of humor, Maesterus. I like that." Valkor's eyes then dimmed out. "Anyway, he fails to understand that since I own you, I own him by proxy, so I order you to order him to exterminate the Kur'Ada Equalists. Are we clear on that?"
Maesterus then looked toward Arcidus. "Do did you get all that?"
"Yes, Master. I'll inform Admiral Gravlek to get the fleet ready." He then sarcastically addressed Valkor. "There, 'Emperor', that wasn't so hard, was it?" Arcidus then grabbed his gear and left the training room while Valkor sighed in annoyance.
Later, Arcidus was performing some pre-mission maintenance on his personal starfighter, the Phantom Razor. It was a stealth fighter with the typical Valkoran starfighter cockpit and two engine pods hooked to the rear, with a total of six folding blade-like wings. The fighter also came with a Valkoran-made astromech droid: V7-L20.
As Arcidus prepared his fighter, Maesterus entered the hangar and approached him. "Aiken."
Arcidus stopped what he was doing and addressed him. "Yes, Master Seferin?"
"I want to let you know that you don't need my authorization to defend yourself, even if your attacker is one of my superiors."
"I know. I just didn't feel like giving Valkor the satisfaction of doing what he wants me to do. I sense something nasty about him. If I've been taught that the Dark Side's a terrible thing, what I sense from him is just as bad, if not worse."
"I understand your feelings, Aiken. He's done some things that I despise him for, almost as much as Masochus. But we don't want to gain his ire yet. And that brings me to why I've come here: I have some extra objectives for you."
"Bring me up to speed."
"I know you've been ordered to eliminate the Kur'Ada Equalists, but before you kill their leader, Mursama Kur'Ada – and there's really no way out of it without getting Valkor's attention – I want to know why she and her party decided to betray our empire. You will land at their base first, sneaking past their fleet in orbit. After you land, our fleet will jump out of hyperspace and engage theirs while our ground forces land, and I will be part of that force so I can get some answers from Mursama."
"Understood." Arcidus hopped into the fighter's cockpit and started to lift off the ground. "I look forward to working with you again, Master. Just like back when we were part of the Order." The cockpit then closed and the Phantom Razor flew out of the hangar.
Regrouping with a part of the Valkoran fleet in Ockla Prime's orbit, Arcidus went ahead of them into hyperspace, with them following seconds afterward.
As the Phantom Razor journeyed through hyperspace to Alpheridies, V7-L20 questioned Arcidus in his droid language. "V7 = Query Arcidus?"
"Ask away, Veeseven."
"Arcidus = Troubled about mission?"
Arcidus lightly chuckled. "I have never met an empathic droid before. I guess the stories about droids gaining personalities after not being memory-wiped for a long time are true after all. And to answer your question Veeseven, yes. I've been sent on assassination missions before, but I'm about to be involved in a massacre. I've killed people for military and strategic reasons, but genocide? I feel like an executioner ordered by a petty tyrant. In fact, Maesterus is pretty troubled about this too, hence why he gave me those extra orders."
"V7 = Query Arcidus about relationship to Maesterus?"
"I've never had a droid ask me about my past either. Very well, I'll humor you. Roughly four-thousand years ago…"
"Arcidus = 4000 years old? / Average human lifespan = 80 years."
"I spent of most of those years sleeping in a cryo-chamber. Biologically, I'm twenty-five." Arcidus continued explaining his background. "Anyway, before I joined the Valkoran Empire, I was a part of the Jedi Order. Before that, I came from a farmland on Saleucami. At age 2, I became aware of my power to set things ablaze, but at the time, I had very little control of that ability and accidentally orphaned myself. When the Jedi came to Saleucami, they found me alone on the farmland, days after I killed my own parents and burned the homestead to the ground. They knew training me was risky, but they also knew they couldn't risk letting my power go untamed or fall into the hands of those who've embraced the Dark Side."
"Arcidus's pre-Jedi life = Depressing"
"I still regret not being able to prevent it at the time, but I've learned to live with my mistakes and move on. Anyway, when I was training with the Order, the Jedi Council had some… difficulties. I had to be in an isolated training chamber, resulting in almost no social contact and me being constantly sprayed by automated fire extinguishers whenever I lost control of my powers. The only one who was able to properly train me to control my power was Seferin Vaelor, who you currently know as Maesterus. The years training under him were good for me, and I finally had someone to look up to. Unfortunately, I didn't even make it to Knighthood when Seferin was exiled from the Order for his involvement in the Mandalorian War and being romantically involved with another Jedi."
"Arcidus – Maesterus = Training go downhill?"
"Yes. I was suffering from some anxiety as a result of his exile, hindering my training and the effectiveness of my Force abilities. During my last training session, I got so frustrated that I accidentally incinerated one of my peers. This in turn led to my exile. But it wasn't a total loss for me, as I now had more reason to search for Seferin. As I scoured the galaxy, I eventually found him and the Valkoran Empire on Ockla Prime and completed my training under him." Arcidus then concluded his story. "And there you have it: some history from long before you were commissioned."
"Maesterus = Arcidus's surrogate father?"
"You could put it that way." The Phantom Razor's systems then alerted Arcidus that they were about to drop out of hyperspace. "Well Veeseven, looks like we've made it to Alpheridies while you were talking me up. Thank you for helping pass the time. Now it's time to deal with the Kur'Ada."
After a lengthy journey through hyperspace, the Phantom Razor entered the Alpheridies system, the homeworld of the Miraluka and the location of the Kur'Ada stronghold. Upon exiting hyperspace, Arcidus and Veeseven were greeted to the sight of the Kur'Ada fleet, consisting of many Katana-class battleships, Hatchet-class gunships and Glaive-class starfighters.
"Veeseven, activate cloaking device." Arcidus commanded his astromech.
"Cloaking Device = Active."
With the cloak active, the Razor turned invisible to both scanners and the naked eye. Usually, starships at freighter-class and below didn't carry cloaking devices, giving Arcidus a bit of an advantage in sneaking past the fleet.
Arcidus stealthily flew past several of the battleships, seemingly not getting their attention. However, the Razor's scanners indicated that there were six fighters tailing him after breaking up from different squadrons. Five of the fighters flanked him from the sides and front while the sixth fired on him, but before the laser fire could do any damage, the Razor rotated its wings to form a buzz-saw pattern. The ship spun sideways and deflected the shots back to sender, at the same slicing the flanking fighters in half; if the pilots weren't sliced apart by the blades, they were either killed by exposure to vacuum or the ensuing explosions.
With this attack, Arcidus's cover had been blown, alerting the Kur'Ada fleet to his presence, but were thankfully unfamiliar with his vessel. He evaded blaster fire from the fleet while fighting off other fighters and gunships before one of the gunships targeted him with some missiles. To throw off the missiles and the fleet, he ejected some scrap metal as a decoy for the missiles before reactivating the cloaking device, faking his death once more.
Entering Alpheridies' atmosphere, this was a close call for Arcidus. He realized that the cloaking device was working at full functionality when those fighters blew his cover. From his experience, only Force-sensitives could detect cloaked ships that easily, and the Kur'Ada were normally blind to the Force, something that was atypical for the Miraluka species since they usually relied on it for sight.
Apparently, some of them were finally learning to connect with it, and he could already tell from just sensing the pilots.
After evading some of the Kur'Ada's anti-air defenses, Arcidus jumped out of his starfighter midflight – leaving the controls to Veeseven – and landed right within the enclave walls. After landing, he was quickly surrounded by a group of Kur'Ada warriors. Arcidus's goggles flashed and all the warriors were quickly incinerated in a blaze of fire.
More warriors of various ranks tried to overwhelm the assassin, but he proceeded to gun them down with precise shots from both his blaster pistol and his sniper rifle.
Meanwhile, the Valkoran fleet entered the system, led by Maesterus's colossal flagship Doomsayer, under the command of the cyborg Admiral Marx Gravlek – who now had severe burns near where his eyes once were and some ocular implants replacing those eyes after his previous encounter with Zolph Vaelor. Several Demolisher-class missile frigates fired a barrage of diamond-boron missiles at the Kur'Ada fleet from a distance while the Behemoth-class landing craft made their way toward the surface. As the fleets battled, most of the landing craft entered the atmosphere.
Some of the massive transports were taken out by the enclave's turbolaser towers, but those were quickly eliminated by squadrons of Shyrack-class bombers. With the ground forces landed outside the enclave walls, the Valkoran deployed some Starmantis artillery droids to blow down the gate, allowing contingents of vehicles and troopers – including Sgt. Will Helms – to enter the enclave and assist Arcidus while several more landing craft deployed their forces within the enclave itself.
With the Kur'Ada forces preoccupied, Arcidus made his way towards the Kur'Ada palace and Mursama's throne room.
After fighting his way through the palace past many Kur'Ada elite warriors, Arcidus had reached the throne room. Sitting before him on the throne was Mistress Mursama Kur'Ada, a female Miraluka warrior with long blond hair and distinctive silver armor with gold in some places and a helmet with an unusual v-shaped crest sitting by her side. She also didn't have her mouth covered like most of the warriors and she had a distinctive blue photoreceptor that was no longer functioning. Also standing before her were two elite warriors that were similarly blinded.
"Mistress, have you gone mad?!" One of the warriors questioned her. "We cannot see without our optics! We are not like the others of our race!"
"Focus, warriors. Feel the Force around you; it flows from life itself. We may not have been born as naturally attuned to it as the other members of our species, but in time, you will learn to understand just as an artist develops their skills."
"What you ask is impossible, Mistress. Our midichlorian counts are just…"
Mursama ]interrupted him. "Those do not matter. Those blood tests aren't always accurate and artificially increasing your count won't make you any stronger in the Force, and artificially lowering it won't make you any weaker either. Contrary to what some think, those little micro-organisms aren't really the cause of the Force; they're like moths attracted to a flame: the stronger a creature's natural Force connection, the more of them there are per a cell. Now focus."
The warriors had a realization. "Yes, Mistress. I can feel it now… and I can feel an assassin nearby." The questioning warrior then alerted his ally. "Protect the mistress!" The two elite warriors charged at Arcidus, only for him to quickly cut them down with his black-bladed lightsaber before deactivating it again.
As Arcidus moved forward, he slowly clapped. "So, the great Mursama Kur'Ada is now training her warriors to use the Force… to kill other Force-sensitives."
"And if it isn't Maesterus's lapdog. I'm aware of my hypocrisy, but times have changed, and so have our goals." Mursama responded. "In fact, I have come to realize that hypocrisy is all too common in the history of the Kur'Ada Equalists. I thought that by purging the galaxy of all Force users after the Miraluka of old oppressed my ancestors, the galaxy by extension would be free of the dangers of Force users such as the Jedi and the Sith. Recently, I came in touch with the Force, and learned that all life was connected to it. With that, I realized that if we're purging all Force-sensitives, we may as well purge ourselves since the Force comes from us too. Then there's the fact that we have allied with you to achieve those goals, and there are plenty of Force users in the Valkoran leadership."
"That definitely explains where the pilots who detected my ship came from. I may have a distaste for hypocrites, but I can admire those who own up to their faults. If you're done with your ethnic cleansing, what do you plan to do now?"
"I don't know yet, but right now, I'm more concerned about the survival of my people." Mursama equipped her helmet, stood up and unsheathed two cortosis swords. "Anyway, I understand that you have come to assassinate me."
Arcidus then drew his lightsaber. "I wish there was another way to do this without getting our Emperor's attention, but I cannot spare your life. However, there's hope that some of your people can be saved, and that you can get some retribution towards the one who ordered your death. What made you decide to betray the Valkoran Empire?"
"Does it matter? Let's just say your goals are a threat to not just us or the galaxy, but to life itself." Mursama then raised her blades. "If you're going to kill me, I take it you're just going to incinerate me?"
"I prefer to fight my opponents on equal terms and only use that when I'm heavily outnumbered. Besides, you still haven't given me enough information." Arcidus attempted to ignite Mursama, only for her to use the Force to protect against the blast. "Just as I predicted; any Force novice can protect against that. That was just a test to see if you were that skilled with it, and that blast wasn't even at full power."
"Don't toy with me, assassin." Mursama used the Force to throw Arcidus into a wall before lunging at him with both swords, but Arcidus was quick to dodge the blows.
As the two Force-sensitive warriors clashed blades, Arcidus refrained from using his blaster or his ignition ability again. What they didn't refrain from doing was throwing each other around.
However, Arcidus was the superior swordsman despite having one less blade than Mursama, and ultimately cut off both of her arms and had her on her knees.
"What are you waiting for? Finish it!" Mursama demanded him.
"I'll grant your wish once you give me your reasons for turning on us."
"If I'm giving a confession, it's more of an execution than an assassination."
A different voice then addressed her. "Mursama." Maesterus entered the throne room and approached her.
"Well, if it isn't the dog's master." Mursama coldly addressed him.
"Don't talk about my apprentice like that. Anyway, I want to know why you betrayed us, not Valkor. Just tell us, and we won't cause you any more trouble than you're going to get already."
"Fine. I learned to use the Force sometime before the Battle of Onderon, and when that winged metal-coated beast – which you called Fafniros - landed on my command ship, it not only killed some of my warriors unprovoked, I could sense something else from it unlike any other creature I've encountered; something that wasn't meant to exist, as if it came from death itself. And I can sense it from you too, Maesterus, but curiously, I also sense the Force and some good in you."
"I know what you sensed. And admittedly, the Forceless have done some things I don't like."
Mursama suddenly panicked. "There's one coming right now!" She could sense a Forceless presence approaching. However this one was different, as unlike the Archfiend she saw or Maesterus, she could sense no life-force from this one.
To everyone's surprise, Valkor entered the room and approached them.
"Emperor Valkor! We weren't expecting you." Maesterus addressed him.
"And I didn't tell you to come here." Valkor responded back.
"Don't you have better things to be doing, like sitting on your throne?" Maesterus asked him sarcastically.
"Oh, come, Maesty. I've got to keep my body in shape, and a good ruler doesn't sit around doing nothing." Valkor then looked towards the defeated Mursama. "Anyway, I ordered you people to execute her, not interrogate her."
From what Mursama could sense, Valkor wasn't exactly a living creature. He was just an indescribable abomination contained within a robotic humanoid shell. "You…" She spoke to him in a terrified tone. "What are you?! You shouldn't even exist!"
"But here I am standing right before you." Valkor's eyes then glowed and some ooze-like Black Matter started to spread out from under his cloak like a shadow, even crawling up the walls of the throne room and moving around Mursama's feet.
Suddenly, some chaotically-placed mouths and eyes similar to those in Valkor's mask sprouted from the Matter, and an oily tentacle suddenly emerged from around Mursama's feet, wrapped itself around her to bind her and then lifted her a few feet above the floor.
"What are you waiting for, monster?! Kill me!" She demanded him.
"Kill you?" Valkor chuckled. "You'd like that, wouldn't you? But where's the fun in that? Besides, I don't want to make you a martyr. With what I'm about to do to you, you're going to wish you could die." Valkor then made another echoing licking sound, and while a worm-like growth with several eyes and a creepy grin – somehow adding a sadistic expression to his face that he otherwise wouldn't have - emerged from one of the eye-slits in his mask, a large mouth resembling a vixus emerged from below Mursama and moved toward her wide open. "I'm also very hungry right now."
"You… You monster!" She yelled at him as the maw enveloped her.
"Don't give me that look, dear. It isn't cannibalism if we're not the same species."
Maesterus and Arcidus could only watch helplessly as Valkor devoured her and the maw retreated back into the puddle before it and the rest of the black ooze retreated back into Valkor.
Mursama awoke in what seemed like darkness, but for the first time, knew what it was like to naturally see. Unfortunately, she did not become one with the Force, and she wasn't really dead or alive.
She had sight and could hear, but she was without a body and unable to move. She was surrounded by an endless void of blackness and millions of glowing red crystal-like eyes while static-like sound echoed throughout the void. She didn't have any eyelids to block the sight of them out and she had no way of blocking out the sound. She didn't even have a mouth to speak with.
In fact, all those eyes were other people Valkor had devoured and that sound prevalent in the void was their attempt to communicate, and Mursama herself was one of them. None but her were even aware of this.
While these types of conditions would drive most beings to point of insanity or despair, Mursama refused to give in, as whatever this place was, she knew it was designed to torture her for who-knows-how-long, and she didn't feel like giving Valkor the satisfaction of listening to her attempt to scream in horror.
Back in the Kur'Ada throne room, Valkor gave Maesterus some new orders.
"Oh, Maesty. Could you be a lamb and bring me the survivors? I'm still hungry, and I'd rather have them alive."
Maesterus then questioned him. "And you're telling me to do something you wouldn't do yourself because…?"
"You seem to have a problem with me, and I wonder if you're still actually loyal to me. So why don't you be a good boy so I don't eat you and your pet?"
Maesterus reluctantly complied. "As you wish." He then ordered Arcidus to follow him and they left the throne room.
After exiting the palace, Maesterus and Arcidus confronted a group of surviving Kur'Ada warriors. The two former Jedi were sickened by the orders they were given by Valkor, but they couldn't really save the warriors either without getting his attention. What they had planned wasn't really morally sound, but it was much better than feeding them to Valkor.
"What happened to Mistress Mursama, Valkoran scum?!" One of the warriors demandingly asked them.
"Your mistress isn't dead." Maesterus answered them as he and Arcidus ignited their lightsabers. "In fact, something far worse than death has happened to her. If you go into that palace, you will only meet the same fate as her."
The warriors attempted to attack the two in retaliation, but they were all killed within seconds not just by them, but some of the other Valkoran forces under the command of Sergeant Will Helms, who surprisingly didn't die for once.
"Sergeant Helms, what happened to Major Kago?"
"He's dead, sir. He and his walker were destroyed by a Halberd tank. By the way, that was the last of the Kur'Ada forces." Helms informed Maesterus.
"Thank the Force…" Maesterus sighed with relief. While he wouldn't have liked feeding them to Valkor, he wouldn't have liked murdering any of them in cold blood or getting them to commit suicide either.
"Is something wrong, My Lord?" Helms asked him.
"No, Sergeant. It's just that Emperor Valkor showed up here unexpectedly."
"I don't blame ya. I'd be on edge too if the big guy himself showed up out of nowhere."
"Order everybody to pull out. I'll regroup with you after I talk with our Emperor."
"Understood." Helms then barked orders to his troops. "You heard him, boys and girls! Let's load up! We're about to go home!"
Maesterus and Arcidus headed back into the palace throne room, where they met with Valkor once again.
"Where is my food?" Valkor questioned them.
"None of them were willing to be taken prisoner, so they all either died trying to fight us or committed suicide." Maesterus answered him. "Tough luck, huh?"
Valkor then turned toward them and his eyes glowed. "Maybe for me, but what about for you?" A Black Matter serpent then emerged from one of his eye slits and moved towards the two Force users with its jaw wide open and drooling. But Maesterus and Arcidus didn't even react.
Valkor retracted the serpent back into his mask and his eyes stopped glowing. "Now that I think about it, I'm not really hungry anymore." Valkor then walked towards the entrance and headed for his personal shuttle. "I will see you back at the capital."
Moments later, after evacuating the enclave and boarding the Doomsayer, Maesterus, Arcidus, Sergeant Helms and Admiral Gravlek watched aboard the bridge as the ship and the accompanying Obliterator-class destroyers bombarded the enclave from orbit with their plasma cannons.
"Helms, did you do as I asked?" Maesterus asked the undying soldier.
"Yes, sir," Helms answered. "All civilians and non-combatants were evacuated from the enclave before the bombardment."
"Excellent. For your heroism and bravery in willing to go against Valkor's demands, you have been promoted, Lieutenant Helms."
"Thank you, sir. That's one hell of a jump in rank."
Maesterus then queried Admiral Gravlek. "And Admiral, were there any surviving ships fleeing from the enclave?"
"Yes, My Lord. Some shuttles with the refugees boarded the remaining warships and retreated into hyperspace," the cyborg admiral informed him. "And good call, My Lord. I've already got enough civilian blood on my hands from Ithor, and I would rather not get any more. In my Imperial days, I've been around Sith Lords and Dark Jedi, and while I may not sense the Force like you do, I always had a bad feeling being around them, and from my experiences with Valkor, it's not any better."
Helms then spoke to Gravlek. "I may not have met Valkor with my own eyes, but I know that bad feeling from Masochus, and he's a former Sith Lord. That psycho one time kidnapped and killed me just so he could turn me into one of his bio-astromech droids. It's a good thing I don't reincarnate in the same body when I die."
Maesterus then addressed everyone on the bridge. "Alright, crew. Where do your loyalties lie? To Valkor, or to me? And I want honest answers."
To his surprise, the entirety of the Doomsayer's crew pledged their loyalty ultimately to Maesterus. It wasn't all that surprising with the Black Guard, as they had been hand-picked by Maesterus himself.
Will Helms made his confirmation of loyalty. "If Masochus is Valkor's closest lackey, I'm sticking with you. He's already caused me enough trouble. Besides, I've been serving under you and your supporters since I joined the Valkoran Army. I don't even know the Emperor that well, and I don't even want to."
Marx Gravlek then made his. "If Valkor's going to make us partake in more genocides, and if he's responsible for what happened to Lady Manthis like you say, I'll be fighting on your side when the time comes. I left the Imperial Remnant so I could find a functional government and so I wouldn't be ordered about by would-be tyrants, and I'm not going to be ordered about by another one."
Arcidus did the same. "Do I even need to say anything? I've known you since the Academy, and you already know what I think about Valkor."
Maesterus then addressed them all. "You people. It's nice to know I have some allies within the Valkoran Empire that are willing to oppose the man it's named for. But until the time comes and we have gathered enough allies, we need to be discreet about this movement."
