Hey guys I'm totally serious about this story. Really. Updating as soon as I can.

Tactician

The first thing I saw was Parva's little sister, Brunya. She was puking her guts out in the training field outside of Intelligence headquarters. I frowned. Brunya was only ten years old, and another rising star in the Guild. Her dyed-purple hair was covered in her body fluid but she was shaking and crying and didn't care.

"Brunya. Get ahold of yourself," I shouted.

She snapped to attention, tears shining in her eyes. "I... I wouldn't go in there if I were you, sir."

"What the hell happened, Mage?"

She shook her head emphatically and then threw up again.

So someone had been killed, probably mauled. This was a common reaction. The first time I'd seen someone run through with a lance, I had barely blinked. But the first time I saw a man charred alive by St. Elmo's Fire from Parva's hands, I had screamed - falling out of the tree I was watching from. The smell of cooked flesh never really does leave your nose, especially since the roast boar that the King insists on serving at banquets is so similar. I believe the man enjoyed watching his generals cringe.

I stepped past Brunya and the somewhat nondescript gate and immediately reevaluated my opinion.

It was a massacre.

Three steps from me, there was a man who had been cut open from his adam's apple to his sternum. There was no blood, but the man was clearly dead. I examined his armor, realizing that the weapon necessary to sear it in half must have been superheated with the magic of St. Elimine. The cut had been sealed shut by the very nature of the weapon.

I turned to another body, noting the missing head. It was a woman wearing a paisley cloak and- I paused.

"Oh, fuck me." I grunted. Someone had forcibly parted Ella from her head. She was good at what she did - not needing a lock pick to jimmy a door open. While she wasn't terrible at assassinations, she couldn't fight to save her life. The cut looked almost casual based on the horizontal slash.

I said a quick prayer to the Saint. She hadn't been a friend of mine, but we'd worked together once to off some minor Etrurian noble at some point. I'd pulled her out of the way of a vengeful Count Reglay's flame spell, which ended up burning down four acres of forest before he put it out himself.

If it had hit her, she might have exploded, much like the third body I examined. There was literally no way to identify it, as it had been killed with a bolt of lightning which completely charred everything into a black husk. Or so I thought, until I saw a telltale glint of gold in what had been a mouth.

"Shit." Why anyway would want to kill the kindhearted Regis was beyond my imagining. The man was never assigned on most missions because he refused to kill his enemies, but he was so good at sneaking around unnoticed and stealing things that barely anyone cared.

I gave up the bodily identification as a bad job. This was cutting me deeper as I continued through the mounds of people I had once known. I felt a wave of lightheadedness and nausea and was tempted to run outside to the field and join Brunya, but I pressed onwards into the main compound, a well built manse.

I immediately regretted it. While there were around twenty or thirty bodies lining the courtyard outside, in here, my friends and associates lined the walls.

"Fucking hell," I whispered as I walked over to where Parva was. Her face was set in stone and she was nursing a large burn on her bare forearm.

"What the hell happened here?" I choked out.

"Some intruder broke into the compound and Legault told me to go get you. But when I got back, everyone in the courtyard had been killed and Legault was standing back to back with the intruder. She nailed me in the arm with a bolt from afar, but my sage's cloak took most of it for me. If I hadn't had this talisman, I'd probably be hurting pretty bad right now. She pointed at the grayish red gem around her neck."

"So he was a traitor?"

"Yeah. This is going to be a scandal if it gets out. So I ran up to them and tried to freeze Legault with the Fimbulvtr," she said, a note of pride entering her voice despite the circumstances. The Fimbulvtr was extremely difficult to use - even I knew that. "But then I missed him and hit the intruder. Don't think she's ever going to swallow right ever again. After that, they jumped onto the intruder's wyvern and took off through the window, but your dad crossed them midair just as they went through. The Highmaster didn't have a weapon drawn, but he literally pulled a dry branch off that tree," she gestured, "just as Blackie checked the other wyvern in the face and put the branch through Legault's right shoulder."

She frowned. "They got away, but I don't think Legault's going to be using his sword arm anytime soon, even with a brilliant cleric to tend to him. The branch came out his back."

Speaking of the devil, my father flew over despite the ceilings being lower than Blackie's standing height. "No survivors, but there might have been people who escaped over a wall and hid," he said grimly. "I told you that man was trouble." If he weren't my father, I would believed that he was sneering at me maliciously. "I've reported to General Murdock. He should be here in several minutes - if not he, well hopefully he won't send General Petro to deal with something like this."

We waited in silence in the courtyard as Parva looked from body to body with morbid curiosity and I tried my very best not to do the same. The trio of mages that Parva had brought along finally finished searching the headquarters for evidence and carried out the trove of espionage. It was clear that Legault had hastily grabbed a few files from the Black Box, where we kept our most important information.

My father looked to me grimly and pointed at it, knowing the significance, but I wasn't worried. "I think that the files which are missing will be more telling than if he had just kept them where they were," I posited. Of course, Legault could have just grabbed a bunch of random files as some sort of false lead.

Unfortunately, Murdock had placed too much trust in his lieutenants to execute his orders. General Petro flew into the courtyard with a contingent of eleven wyvern riders, his spear drawn.

My father flew up to meet him.

"General," he said respectfully. Petro ignored him, as the man was retired and thus not worthy of any respect.

Petro turned to me. "Doug Deeping, you are under arrest by the justice of the King of Bern."

I stared at him, stunned. Parva looked just as perturbed. The worst part was that my father didn't even seem surprised. I knew he had hated General Petro, but I never knew the depth of contempt the other man held for him to order my arrest.

"No."

I was surprised the word hadn't come out of my own mouth. My father leapt onto the back of Blackie and drew his lance in a smooth motion.

"Trial by combat. I will be my son's champion."

Petro's mouth was set into a hard line. Was he willing to test his luck against the Highmaster of the Wyvern Corps, who had earned his position through blood, sweat and genius?

He was.

Petro nodded once and then leveled his lance at my father.

I compared the two weapons. Petro's lance was obviously well made, shining with a coating of silver that bit into flesh and caused deep wounds. My father had a collection of mass-produced iron lances he had bought from the local armory for a bundle deal of two thousand gold pieces.

But he had always said that it was the warrior who determined the strength of a weapon after all.

I had never seen my father fight before, but his dance of death in our manse's courtyard every morning spoke to how he had not let his skill decay, even as age weakened him.

And he was as fast as ever. Blackie surged forwards in a whirlwind of wyvern, easily cowing Petro's wyvern, which was twice Blackie's size and around a quarter as intimidating.

It came as a surprise to me when my father missed the first tilt entirely. Indeed, it came as a surprise to nearly everyone in the courtyard spectating. Blackie strafed to the left with a maneuver that seemed to defy the laws of nature and Petro's lance went wide by nearly three times the distance that my father had left his opponent. My father jabbed quickly at the spot where Petro had been a millisecond previously and Blackie winged back a comfortable distance, waiting for Petro's reaction.

I felt Parva's lips ghost over my ear and I shivered involuntary. "He did that on purpose. He's testing Petro's reaction and making him let his guard down."

Sure enough, Petro's wyvern flew at Blackie, hoping to overwhelm the smaller wyvern and allow his rider to score a kill on my father, but with a mighty heave, Blackie slammed his claws into the other wyvern's, matching its strength and headbutted the larger wyvern with what I estimated to be enough force to level a wall.

Petro careened out of the way, his dragon stumbling and attempting to orient itself, but with another jab, so much quicker than the last that I had barely registered it, with the butt of his lance, Highmaster Deeping knocked General Petro off his wyvern and Petro plummeted to the ground.

"Yield," my father called out with a voice of silken nobility and steel knighthood.

Petro somehow got to his feet, bowed and whispered, "I yield," just loud enough for us to hear.

"He's not going to take this sitting down," Parva whispered.