Halls of Ivory
Chapter 11 - Homewreckers
By the time Salma's line ended with Jennah's death, the city of Divinity's Reach had been centuries old. Hundreds of years of humans resettling into the city, fortunes of families coming and going, businesses opening and closing, entire districts re-envisioned and rebuilt on top of their older iterations. As a result, the current city is merely the top layer. The ruins once inhabited lay buried beneath, its roads and pathways repurposed by the Shining Blade to traverse the city unseen.
The caves within were known to house their outposts, even their main headquarter somewhere below the northern cemetery. Some of those caves served as escape routes for the queen, should her palace be attacked from above. Now that Jennah was gone, many of those hallways went unused.
The battle of Brisban Wildlands had many consequences.
The gap between the Separatists and the Seraph had been bridged. They used to consider the old 'anything goes if it's to stop the Separatists' approach a moral good, but being on the receiving end of it gave them an understanding of just how sobering it was. Everyone understood now that they were in the same boat. It made the scorched-earth approach the Separatists brought to diplomacy much more understandable, all the fighting and arguing between both sides died down almost immediately.
The Seraph also had broken from the Shining Blade in earnest. Sure, there were disagreements , but they never took up arms against them before. The blood that now had been spilled, could never be unspilled. Even if many didn't want to at the time, they had now fully committed to the fight against the Shining Blade and their lot was for better of worse, tied to that of the Separatists. The lengths the Shining Blade were willing to go to and the atrocities they were willing to commit, showed them that there was no option to run or hide, they could only stand and fight, or be caught unprepared and die.
The Commander and Logan were always intent to prevent bloodshed wherever possible. But after what had happened, they both came to an understanding: If they wanted to negotiate with Anise, they had to do so from a position of strength. The Separatists' takeover of Divinity's Reach had to become a realistic and feasible option or else Anise would see no reason to change her ways.
By the time they wrapped up hiding or burying the bodies and calming the scared citizenry, it had grown dark and everyone was exhausted. Many were disturbed by the fallout, Separatists looting the corpses of Shining Blade members, many of which they decapitated so they could impale their heads on spikes for public display. There wasn't quite a sight like the face of a lady of the Shining Blade, mangled and bloodied, all her expensive powders and creams smeared about by the fray of unexpected resistance. An unmistakable show of someone who took victory for granted and found herself proven wrong.
On the very next morning, the Commander and Logan met and knocked on Lord Aldryn's front door. "A good morning to you two. Congratulations on the battle yesterday, I was with the archers above."
The two of them had discussed the subject at hand on the way here, but the Commander did the talking. "I figured as much. We have to do something about Anise, we can't just let her hatch one plan to kill us after the other."
Aldryn shrugged. "We can't do much about her as long as the Charr are in the way."
"You said you had an idea how to deal with them."
The minister responded with a dismissive gesture. "Yes, but on our own, I can't make it work yet - on the other hand, I've been thinking about one possibility, but it would hinge on your assistance. Would you two be willing to commit to a mission to get the Charr out of Kryta?" The Commander was about to agree, but the minister interrupted him. "I mean both of you. The Captain's help would be key."
"Yes. We have to stop Anise."
"Are you sure? It's likely that a lot of Shining Blade will die in the process. By your hand if necessary."
Just one day earlier, that would have been a dealbreaker. Now, it wasn't any more. "Anything to bring this conflict to an end. I'm in."
Lord Aldryn seemed almost surprised at how little trouble it took to persuade Logan. "Well that is a pleasant surprise. In that case, I do have a full plan worked out, but it will need a little preparation." He retreated inside his house to fetch a missive. "I'll have a courier and a few men to complement your scouting party waiting at the caves' exit. You will escort the courier to the caves west of Eda's orchard. He will meet with a contact and then return to you, then you return back here and report to me again.
Easy enough. One of those scouting missions the Commander had been on before, involved something exactly like that, even with the same destination. In fact it was the same courier as back then waiting just outside Scarycave. Like last time, they brought a lot of provisions, because it was a long trip and they would spend several days waiting at the destination. The only difference being that Logan came along to learn the lay of the land the way the Separatists did.
Of course Logan had inhibitions going on travels alone with a group of self-declared outlaws on shifty pathways that only a criminal would seek out. But at least he kept his disapproval to himself and to the relief of both of them, the Shining Blade had become much more careful with deploying scouts or traveling along the main roads at all. They didn't see any of them during the many times they peeked towards their usual routes. Either they had bundled up all their previous scouts to make up the army that attacked Scarycave or they had simply assumed that their poison gas would be successful and that there wouldn't be any more reason to roam the countryside in search for Separatists.
It went smoothly and as intended. They got to their destination without issue and within little more than a day, the courier had returned from meeting the contact. And their trip back was just as uneventful. With Logan's first mission complete, all they could do was wait. After another night's rest, the same courier visited the Commander with a message. They were to come visit the minister and come prepared for a long day of work.
When he next ascended the planks to Lord Aldryn's home, Logan was already standing in front of the door. "Commander, did you get a letter like this, too?" Logan's hair was a mess and his armor was dirty from sitting around in these tunnels without taking proper care of it, but he looked a lot more rested than how the Commander had seen him recently.
Mere moments after Logan called the Commander by his rank, the minister's front door swung open. "Commander, Captain Thackeray! What a pleasant surprise seeing you up in such a timely manner."
"Did you wait right there for both of us?"
"Possibly. We can't get to this matter too soon. I have great news for both of you. Now is the time to clue you in to what the correspondence you helped with related to." He pulled out a letter the courier had come with when he returned from meeting his contact. "A little bird told me that there is a defector in the Charr's ranks. A Tribune no less. A high-ranking member of the blood legion with close ties to the Iron Legion's Imperator. The exact person fit for our purposes. With his help, one of our potential plans will become a very real plan that you will help set in motion."
"And what would this plan be?"
Lord Aldryn pointed at Logan. "You, my friend, were one of the late Queen's most trusted soldiers. Positioned inside her palace as the queen's personal bodyguard many times. Which is why I'm inclined to believe you know a thing or two about any passageways she could use to escape out of the city. Or more importantly, INTO it if the situation required it."
"I just might. What of it?"
"The Charr are here because of their new claim to the land, but this claim is more fragile than the countess would care to admit. It is in its entirety contingent on the infamous treaty that exacerbated the disaster that is Kryta's state of being. But that treaty came with conditions, did it not? The Charr have a claim to the lands of Kryta SO LONG as they stay away from Divinity's Reach and I quote, 'most importantly, my own home remain untouched', end quote. The 'my own home' part is what's important. You two will meet my agent in the field and the defector and escort them INTO the royal palace where you will kill any Shining Blade that come your way, help the Charr sift through the late queen's personal effects, destroy as much of her property as you can and thus nullify the treaty."
The captain already saw a problem with the Separatists' plan. "I get where you're coming from, but even if we do this, Anise has shown she's not above perverting the courts to meet her ends. People won't just drop what they've been doing because someone caught wind of a Charr in the palace. They're not going to act on it because that's an outcome they don't want."
His objection didn't intimidate the minister though. "Which is why you're going to need this Asuran contraption when you're there." He went inside by a few steps, lifted up a strange, cubic machine with a fan of six flat, turquoise panels with red outlines, reaching out around and away from one lens that lay embedded on the box. "This thing is called a 'camera'. It can record not only sounds but images, but unlike the standard asuran holorecorders, it records flat, full-color images like the Canthan models. When turned on, whatever is in front of this side…" He pointed at a lens between the four blades of the fan. "…will be recorded on a film inside it. If we process that film - which I know how to do - we can project its contents onto any canvas of our choosing."
"All right, I'm starting to get it. You want us to record the Charr messing up Jennah's home so we can use it as evidence later."
The minister smiled. "Precisely. You need to create as much evidence as possible of a Charr breaking into the palace and destroying Jennah's furniture, art pieces, anything you can find. But beyond that, remember that Anise will not carry out the negation of this contract by herself. We will have to force her into that. The only thing that will work is to call for a trial on a breach of the treaty before the ministry and play the evidence there. And you know full well that Anise routinely circumvents the ministry and operates through the courts. She will try to leverage her position to have her pet crony Efram preside over the case and even if she doesn't, whichever judge picks up that position will latch onto every excuse they can find to dismiss our case."
The captain folded up his arms. "I'm sure judge Meldan would be fair and non-partisan."
"Not when he is on the spot with Anise's resentful glare picking away at his skin. Meldan may have done his best so far, but he is still just a person. Every judge is to some extent aware of what happened to Efram's predecessor and none of them want to share his fate."
"So what, Anise is just going to relegate all power to the courts to have them legislate from the bench and then threaten to kill the judges unless they do what she wants?"
The minister raised one eyebrow. "Did you expect her to do anything else?" Logan really didn't like the sinister outlook this implied, but going by how Anise went about with the treaty, he could see where the Separatist was coming from. "Point being, recording evidence that would void the treaty in the eyes of an unbiased judge is by itself not enough. They will try to dismiss our case out of hand, rendering mute any evidence we gather. At which point for the uninformed citizen, it will appear as though the case had been tried and we had simply failed to prove it. So the Charr will not only have to break into the palace but also cause enough of a ruckus in the streets to where the ministry and the judiciary can no longer feign ignorance for fear of losing face before the populace."
The Captain scratched his chin, starting to get a full grasp of the situation Aldryn laid out. "With the Seraph all but disbanded, the only thing commoners can look to for justice are the courts. If even those fail at bringing anything resembling justice, lynch mobs are bound to form eventually."
The minister grinned and pointed at him. "And THAT is the last thing they want. No-one is more afraid of lynch mobs than a judge, as a judge who makes arbitrary rulings against the common man's interests is among the first to get lynched."
For all intents, the plan and its details were clear to them now. And there was a reason for every aspect of it. The Seraph had never taken part in the Separatists' trips outside, but the Commander had. So the two of them going out on a mission like this alone was the Commander's chance to show Logan how to navigate Queensdale as an outlaw without Separatists constantly looking over their shoulders.
Logan complained every step of the way at first. Even just traveling through Krytan land was dangerous and tedious if you had to elude any and all troops stationed. Moreso with the Charr setting up camp everywhere. He had no idea how tough life was for an outlaw. Any claim he had heard someone loyal to Jennah make of being a 'rebel' or 'revolutionary' from within the comfort of the Seraph's and the Lionguard's protection seemed so hollow and delusional after witnessing the reality of an actual rebel's everyday life.
The hardest part was slipping past the high legions, as their main camps and the patrols coming from them covered most of the chokepoints they could have crossed to get to northern Queensdale. The Commander had to lead Logan through several detours, all the way up the caves in the western mountains where they had to make camp, taking turns at keeping watch while one of them slept.
The meeting point was a cave just east of the dam. Less than a three hour march away from Shaemoor. And once deep enough to vanish around a corner away from prying eyes, the Commander scouting ahead did spot someone who set off every alarm for him. "Grell!" He readied his staff to let loose on the Charr. "You bloody murderer! How did you find out about this place?"
The Charr sat on an elevated rock as if it were a throne, leaning back with his arms crossed. "The same way you did."
"So a Separatist told you! They have a mole in their ranks! I need to warn them."
From further inside, a much more welcome voice stopped him in his tracks. "Settle down, Commander, you've got the wrong idea." Under careful steps, Rytlock Brimstone, blood legion Tribune and a close friend of Logan's for many years, emerged from around the corner.
Logan immediately ran ahead to meet him. "Rytlock! It's so good to see you!"
The Tribune snarled and pushed him away. "Don't get all soft on me yet. We have work to do. I sure hope you know a way into the palace."
It took a while to dawn on them but now they understood. "So you're the defector? But why?"
Logan's friend hung his head and sighed. "This whole mess makes no sense. Our time in Kryta is all headaches and nothing else. We're sitting around as an occupying force to a nation that isn't our enemy. Something's clearly up that we're not being told about and it won't get any better unless we flip this whole thing on its head."
"What do you mean?"
Rytlock wasted no time marching back out of the cave with Logan following closely. The Commander kept a close eye on Grell, still unsure about his involvement. "Smodur's been acting strange. He had this whole speech where he announced that we own Kryta, but then did nothing to that effect himself. If he were serious about this, he'd be right in the middle of it, directing troops, building castra and setting up reinforced outposts. Instead, he's holed up in his seat in the Citadel. Something about this stinks. If I didn't know any better, I'd say the speech was lip service and now he's hiding, but this isn't like him at all."
"Why not just ask him what's going on yourself?" the Commander asked.
"This stuff bears all the hallmarks of being overly cautious. I think he's afraid of a coup. So any Charr that walks into that room by himself risks getting his head blown off."
Logan recalled something Rytlock had said long ago about how he rose up the ranks. "You kill your superior, you assume his position."
"Yep, it's how Charr have always done it. If I'm right, then Smodur's afraid of becoming part of tradition. The only way to confront him is with numbers. Charr numbers. But as long as Iron Legion is spread out across Ascalon AND Kryta, there's not much I can do. Now come on, we can't afford to waste time."
Logan led the way, back west up the mountains and then up along the top of the dam until they were right beneath the walls of the city. On their way, the Commander confronted Grell. "So you were Aldryn's man on the inside? I want to know what he'd say if he knew you were responsible for Shaemoor."
The Charr gave him the biggest grin he had ever shown. "You go ahead and tell him. See what he thinks about it."
Past one of the rivers leading out from the city's sewers, the walls of the city had a few small irregularities. Bricks that jutted out a little more than they should have and unlit torches that were attached to the walls for no reason were only two of the notable ones.
Logan reached for two of the former and pushed them back into the wall. They slid in with little trouble and set off a chain of loud noises. Stone ground against stone from the other side of the wall, until the wall parted and opened the way into a tunnel. "One of Jennah's emergency exits. She has a lot of those. But there's no way the Shining Blade don't know about it. These tunnels have been around since before her time."
"Then whoever came before her, thought ahead a lot more than she did." Grell sneered.
Just as Logan suspected, they eventually ran into a Shining Blade patrol. Before she could shout for reinforcements though, Grell vanished reappeared behind her and slit her throat from behind. "We were lucky that there was only one. This little trick doesn't work if there's two or more. And there will be. They're going to scream for help eventually. We better brace for combat now."
The Commander wasn't sure about listening to Grell at first, but Rytlock drew his burning sword, Sohothin and grunted at the other two: "You heard him. It's time to get serious." With their weapons drawn, they marched at a swift pace down one corridor after the next. These tunnels were an uneven maze, owing their awkward shape to being the repurposed streets of a city landscape that no longer was. Which served to confuse any potential intruders who found their way in here. Having Logan here to guide them was a real boon.
The torches on the walls were lit, so they knew they had every reason to stay alert. And they eventually did make contact with more Shining Blade. Two soldiers came patrolling their way. The Commander and the others were fortunate enough to have a corner to hide behind and eavesdrop on their targets. But when they came too close to hide from them, the thief stepped out and tried to repeat his trick from earlier.
He slit the throat of one of them before they knew what was happening, but the other saw it and was about to shriek. This time, the Commander took the initiative, conjured a dark, spectral hand that reached for him but instead of wrapping the fingers around his limbs, he made them reach straight for his throat. The soldier got some words out, but nowhere near loud enough to reach the palace or the nearest patrol. He tried to pull it off, but that only gave Grell the time to take him down as well. "Nice save. But that won't work forever either." While traveling further up the tunnels, the Charr kept Logan's pace. "I'm surprised you're not stopping us and trying to reason with them."
Logan kept his demeanour as cold and uninvolved as possible. He had ever since they entered these passageways. "I've tried reasoning with them before. They burned every bridge between us. All that's left now is to do whatever it takes to save Kryta."
Then finally, they reached an entrance to the palace proper. A hidden mechanism within an apparent dead end slid open, leading right into a corridor of the inner palace. "We did it. This hallway connects the throne room to Jennah's chambers."
Rytlock spelled out what Logan wouldn't dare to. "Step one: Clear the palace. Kill every Shining Blade we find and block off all the exits so we can work in peace."
"There has to be a better way. Maybe some sleeping gas or darts…"
Grell cut him off. "Being limp-wristed isn't how you get your way. Besides, every Shining Blade man or woman we take out now is one more we won't have to deal with when we engage them head-on."
It was settled. Logan said it himself: Every bridge between him and the Shining Blade was burned and they weren't about to build new ones any time soon. With their weapons drawn and their nerves steeled, they marched and slew their way through the marble halls. Checking every corner and opening every door and going right for the kill whenever they encountered enemies. The Commander channeled his magic through his axe, carving open the throats of every enemy he could while he reshaped some of their corpses into shambling undead minions - creatures of blood and bone - to slow down any enemies that came from behind. When there was more than one soldier, then Grell would step in and stab the others or sweep away their legs to send them tumbling to the ground.
From time to time, when someone actually lived long enough to get up close to them, Rytlock's shattering strikes with the burning sword Sohothin quickly dented their armors and broke their spines. The few times one of the Shining Blade brought a bow instead of a sword, Logan used what little magic he had learned to create a shield that blocked their arrows and bought time for the others to take care of it. When they weren't engaged in a fight, they would stand guard around Logan as he employed all the covert mechanisms he knew of to lock all the hidden entrances from inside the palace.
It was a bloodbath. It didn't have a scale anywhere near that of Shaemoor, but it was one nonetheless. Spread out to a few bodies per room or hallway. It took having to actually kick in every door and check every single room for them to fully realize just how huge and pompously furnished Jennah's palace was on the inside. When compared to what was not publicly accessible even for nobles, the throne room was the most plain and humble part of the palace by a large margin.
When the deed was finally done and the last Shining Blade soldiers had either died or fled, they fetched the heaviest drawers and cupboards they could find and blocked off the front entrance. "Quick! Get the device out and let's get to work!" The Commander did as instructed, pulled the camera out of one of his bags checked for the light that signaled that it was recording. When it did, a flat panel on the back of the cube depicted what was in front of it, a preview of what was being recorded. Grell picked up one of the dead soldiers and ran one arm around her body to lift her up. He puppeted her limp corpse along the side of the throne room. "Hey! Look at me! Charr dancing with your girl here! You like it?"
"Ignore him! Look over here!" Sprawled across Jennah's padded throne sat Rytlock, sipping from one of Jennah's own wine glasses. "Wow, lazying about on a throne, that's so hard! I feel so tired out!" He paused. "Nah, not really." He got up, drew his sword and smashed the throne again and again, breaking out parts of the armrests and the back every time he did it. He kept going until the throne was just a few bent and broken pieces of gold, some molten with burnt padding in-between. "I smashed your precious throne! Look what a good neighbor I am!"
By the time that the Commander pointed the Camera back at Grell, he was ripping the shoulderplates off one of the dead soldiers' armors. He presented one of them in clear view of the Camera. "You know I really like these. I think I might start collecting those. Killing humans on the regular and taking their shoulderpieces as trophies. What do you think?"
"As any Charr would." the Tribune interjected, once again with Jennah's wine glass in hand. "Now come on, let's go mess with Jennah's stuff." So Logan and the Commander followed the Charr through the hallways with the camera still rolling, filming them as they danced on top of every corpse they came across until they got to Jennah's personal chambers, a more restricted part of the palace. "Dum, di dum, di dum, di dum…"
They went on unhindered until they reached one open door in particular. "Here we are, Jennah's bedchamber. Doesn't get any more private than that."
Logan showed some apprehension. When Grell waved him inside more insistently, he rejected the offer. The Charr exchanged looks and then shrugged. They only needed one Charr and the Commander didn't have as many hangups with taking the palace apart.
Rytlock came back out and joined Logan in the hallway. "I don't think I can do that…" the captain mumbled. "...just walk in her bedroom and watch you trash the place."
"There's more places to look through anyways. Like that one over there." Rytlock pointed to the door to Jennah's hall of curios. Another one of the rooms she permitted no-one to enter save for hand-selected assistants. Even Logan wasn't allowed to see inside. It had a retractable wall which had been locked prior to Grell and Rytlock kicking it in like they did with the door.
Mounted on pedestals stood all manner of art pieces from sculptures to paintings. At first, they were simple art, then as they ventured deeper into the gallery, the pieces to their left and right became much more technological, much more 'function-over-form' in nature. Some of them were just defunct steam creatures bereft of any dents that would indicate a fight. Others were Asuran consoles and cube-shaped codexes similar to some Logan had seen in Zojja's lab.
They were crude and unshapely at first, but the steam creatures further along were more elegant and human-like in design. They had uncanny, vaguely human faces forged onto their 'heads' and thinner but more solid segments connecting their joints allowed for a lot of flexibility to those machines, If one of them was to turn on. "What exactly are those things?" Logan walked up to a narrow desk next to one of the mechanical humanoids. There was a stack of paper on it, on its top a letter directly to Queen Jennah from a 'Scarlet Briar'.
"Dear Jennah. I've taken your input on my steam creatures to heart and gave them a complete overhaul. I present you with one of the prototypes for the new model: The Watchknight. They are entirely operable through mesmeric magic. You and any mesmers at your disposal will be able to either control them directly or charge them so they can fight autonomously instead of human footsoldiers. Imagine an age when you no longer need the consent of your soldiers to launch military action. After all, their minds are limited. Greater spirits like you and I are ahead of our time, it is only right if we make sure that peasants and some men with swords and shields can't hold us back."
"By the gods…" he mumbled. "She calls this a 'prototype'. Is that what those others are?" He looked over to where the gallery continued. From here, the art pieces were all but replaced with varying models of 'Watchknights'. Some were slightly taller than a human like this one, others were larger and wide enough to match a fully loaded wagon in size. "Jennah…what were you doing?"
After glossing over the letter, the Tribune marched ahead and waved for Logan to come along. "Raising an army it looks like. Good thing that's done with now." The gallery ran quite a stretch further inside and was wider, the further into it they went. The further they followed the range of prototypes, the more grotesque and disturbing were their designs. Some had more arms and had them arranged in asymmetrical ways, some had increasingly distorted faces and some were so divorced from the bipedal make of a person, that they were more octopus than man.
When the Commander and Grell entered the queen's bedchambers, the Charr charged straight at the huge bed at the opposite end and bounced on it. "There's her bed! Weeeee!" It was made of perfectly smoothed out pine wood and veils of the smoothest Canthan silk with threads of pure gold interspersed. One of said veils got caught on one of the Charr's tiny horns, but rather than halt his movements, it simply ripped all of it off the upper frame leaving it to drop on Grell's face. "Ah, didn't see that one, best just dump this stuff on the floor, who cares?"
Jennah's bedchamber was even more extravagant than the rest of her palace. Half-way through it there was a sideroom with a water pool fashioned from smoothed-out jade. The buckets next to it indicated that it had to be filled and emptied by multiple servants. In another side chamber there were cages with small exotic cats, none of which he had ever seen in his life. The gold mouldings along the walls were twice as large here.
The furniture - while still mounted with gold, was in fact not made of marble but ivory, imported all the way from Kourna and fashioned into furnishings locally, with soft cushioning wrapped in the smoothest deep-red fabrics embedded on the surface of most pieces. And every inch of the walls was covered in paintings, imported curios or framed awards, many of them issued recently by Jennah to herself in congratulations to her own greatness and brilliance. Grell snorted and pointed at one of the awards. "Geez, Jennah. Feel free to stop tooting your own horn any time."
The most affordable things around were the books in the ivory shelf and even in their case, it appeared as written at the front, they weren't mass published books that Jennah had someone buy in a store, they were unique commissions that Jennah paid renowned and notorious authors alike to write for her exclusive keep and use. Almost half of them were from Snargle Goldclaw alone. "'Unique' again?" Grell spread out the one bag he was carrying that was somewhat sizable and stuffed a few of the books in it. "If those really are exclusives, they're worth a fortune. Let me just bag a few of those! We'll see if the others want a few of them and then we just rip apart the rest."
As Grell moved on to rummaging through all her dressers, the Commander didn't recognize the fabrics they were made of. He couldn't even begin to imagine how they had been tailored, what the materials were, where they were from or how expensive they must have been. Just how much of the kingdom's coffers had Jennah been spending on this? She made her everyday life as frivolous as humanly possible.
When the Charr was finishing up reaching to the end of one of the smaller drawers, he found something. "This one doesn't reach as far as the others!" He grabbed it with both hands and pulled it with enough force to rip it off the metal sliders. To ease their use, the actual drawers in the dressers were wooden, so he raised the detached drawer and smashed it onto the floor, breaking it open. Now the Commander could see - and catch on film - why it had drawn Grell's attention: There was a hidden compartment in this drawer and smashing it open spared them the trouble of looking for a key.
Inside was one, single book. And its contents didn't bear the clearly legible blocky font of a printing press, but handwriting. "Now that's interesting, why would she keep that here and not in any of the shelves?" It consisted of dated entries with recounts of events and random thoughts added to it.
And going by the context in one of them, Grell and the Commander came to the same conclusion. "This is Jennah's journal. She was keeping a journal! Think of how much this might be worth! What's in the most recent entry?" He flipped as far forward as he could without running into empty pages. "Let's see…'the day of the new treaty is getting closer and closer. Managing who can know how much is getting overwhelming, I just want it to start, I yearn fo-...wait…" He burst out laughing to the Commander's confusion. "HA! CAT LADY!" He shouted mid-laughter.
The Commander was a little confused. "Yes, she has several cats."
The snickering Charr shook his head. "That's not what 'cat lady' means." He ran to the hallway outside. "Hey, Brimstone! Come and take a look at this! You won't believe it!"
Logan remained in the gallery to further inspect its contents and a very impatient Tribune approached Grell. "What is it?" The gloating thief stepped over to him while the Commander followed to keep the camera focused on them. "Give me that." He pulled the journal out of Grell's hands and read the entry in question himself. "Oh no - ugh - argh, disgusting…" A discomforted grimace took hold of his snout and he pressed the book back in the other Charr's hands. "I'm feeling sick even thinking about it." With this, the Tribune stepped aside, covered his mouth and suppressed the urge to regurgitate the loaf of bread he had for breakfast.
"So what's so special about a cat lady?" The Commander asked. He was still not sure what this Charr jargon was about.
Grell kept laughing. "You still don't get it? She's a freak who likes her flagpoles barbed!"
"Krytan flagpoles don't have barbs."
Grell slapped his face with his palm. "Not literal flagpoles, I'm saying she shares a bed with Charr."
"Well of course she's in bed with the legions, she gave Kryta to them."
Now the Commander was just riling Grell up on purpose. "Nooo." He made a grasping gesture towards the camera with his claws. "I'm being very literal this time! She was a freak! I'll make it so obvious even Mr. Silver Spoon over here gets it: She was a crazy person. Where normal humans prefer the company of other humans, she's so twisted in the head that she lusts after Charr! This last entry starts off about the treaty but most of it is just about how much she wants to mount Smodur's barbed flagpole! Who knows what other raunchy stuff is in there!"
It was good to get this on camera. Insulting the queen, sifting through her belongings and giving raunchy commentary on her love life was good material for driving Anise crazy. As well as any other supporters Jennah had left. But he still felt the need to call for some moderation. "It's funny and all - but who she's attracted to is up to her, we can't judge her for it. Lusting for Charr doesn't make her a crazy person."
Grell simply laughed at the Commander to his face and Rytlock didn't look like he agreed with him either. "Oh no, lusting after Charr WOULD BE okay if she were a Charr herself, but as a human? That's just disturbing. She didn't belong on a throne, she belonged in an asylum." He pinched Rytlock with his elbow. "Hey…hey Rytlock. What do you think Mr. loyal-to-a-fault Captain would say if he found out he never stood a chance with her?"
The Commander couldn't suppress his concern. "By the gods, it would devastate him. He would never think badly of Jennah…"
Rytlock interrupted him. "And that last part is exactly why he never stood a chance. Cat ladies like being slapped around and humans do anything but."
"At least that explains why she thought the treaty was a good idea."
The Commander had trouble believing what he heard. "Are you implying she would throw away her entire kingdom just to indulge a fetish?"
Both Charr gave him a perplexed look. "We're not talking about a sane person here. Make excuses all you want, but she was a deranged slag and this book proves it." He stuffed the journal in the same bag as the other books. "Either way, this thing's the holy grail of dark Krytan secrets. We've got everything we wanted. I'd say it's time to go."
The relieved Tribune turned around and made his way out of the bedchambers. "Agreed. I'll get Logan." With their group reassembled, they let Rytlock and the Commander pack in a few of the commissioned books to sell later and then get ready to leave.
The palace had many hidden exits and Logan specifically chose the one with the most narrow corridors on the outside to slip back out of the city. Strangely enough, the tunnels and caves they navigated on the way out were devoid of Shining Blade. They could only infer that the Shining Blade were still in shock over the attack and either deliberating on how to take back the palace or assembling all their troops in one place to try to overrun the four of them.
And the route they took in the underground tunnels was more contorted than the straightforward path they expected on the way out. That was because Logan didn't lead them out of the city, but back inside it through a different entrance. The mechanism that would open the wall in front of them left them wandering into an abandoned house. It was furnished and decorated as though someone lived here, but the lights were out, the windows were closed, everything was dusty and there were cobwebs everywhere. "Salma district. Aldryn said we have to cause a ruckus in the city. This is a good stop to do it. Smash whatever you like but try not to hurt any citizens."
Rytlock moved ahead without a word, but Grell drew a hidden pistol. "I'm not making any promises."
The tables from the Commander's festivals were still set up, but no-one was celebrating any more. Merchants had set up their stands again in hopes of attracting customers but most stayed indoors. Perhaps for the better. Rytlock drew Sohothin and got to smashing all the tables, and roaring random nonsense. "Raaah! Big angry Charr incoming! Charr smash!"
Meanwhile Grell spotted a crowd in a garden up a wall. He jumped onto the wall, climbed up and announced himself. "Hey everyone! I hear a lot of talk of Charr being nice and friendly! You guys think Charr are nice and friendly? Well, think again!" He raised his pistol and fired every round it had loaded right into the crowd before jumping back down and rushing towards the others. "That's enough, let's get out of here!"
With half a dozen humans wounded, people in their houses terrified by the gunfire and the entire square full of burning heaps of rubble that once were tables, their work here was done. They quickly hurried back into the little house, slammed the door shut behind them and barricaded it before hiding behind the hidden door so Logan could set off the mechanism to close it. "What part of shooting at a crowd sounds like 'not hurting citizens'?"
"Relax, I didn't aim at their vitals, most of them will survive."
"I'd hope so. One attack like this alone isn't enough to generate the pressure we need." This time, he led them right outside the city, leaving them with no option but to march along the outside of the cliff the city was built upon. Logan didn't know the tunnels beneath the city too well. He only knew what paths were essential for Jennah to navigate it in case of an emergency. So instead of trying to find his way through the labyrinth to the other side of the city, he led them back to one of the entrances that led to the palace and then followed one route he did know. When he pulled the lever to open the door, he announced: "Ossan Quarter, let's go!"
This wall led into a house that was actually inhabited. An Elonian man and woman were taken by surprise when a random wall in their hallway opened up and two Charr came rushing through and pushing the front door open. "Out of the way, angry Charr coming through!"
The Commander ordered the two civilians: "Go upstairs and stay there! We'll be gone within a minute! Now!" The Elonians followed suit, but the Commnder and Logan stayed at the house to make sure the Charr found it and could run in unhindered.
On the square on this side, a town crier cleared his throat and announced to the locals: "Citizens of Divinity's Reach, there is no cause for alarm. The Shining Blade have breached the gates of the royal palace and the regressive Seraph that attacked it have been apprehended, proving once again that our new values always triumph. Rejoice in having a strong and smart leader such as Countess Anise guide you to the fu-" Grell fired two shots in his chest, causing him to collapse on the spot and then proceeded to search for the nearest crowd to empty the rest of his gun on, while Rytlock got to work destroying all the merchants' stands that weren't too far away.
Elona was a region of nigh-unchartable scale, far to the southeast beyond the Shiverpeaks also known as 'the land of the golden sun' - whose human population had vastly different faces and skin tones ranging from tan to completely black. They were the largest of the three ethnic groups who made the Ossan Quarter in the north of the city their home. They had much less patience for central Tyrian sensibilities like the same self-sacrificing philia for foreigners that got them into this mess. When Charr showed up burning down market stands with magic swords and shooting at crowds in this particular area, it was bound to cause a major uproar with the Elonians that wouldn't die down any time soon.
"That's enough, off we go!" They ran back to the house, the humans followed them and closed the hidden door behind them.
Logan cautioned everyone: "They'll know for certain where we came through, so we can't afford another attack like this. We have to leave now." They ran all the way through the corridor to the exit, closed the wall behind them and then slipped into the thicket beside the river. They kept marching, using every corner and hiding place to check if they were being followed, but by the time they made it to the mountains on the western edge of Queensdale, it was clear the Shining Blade either failed to follow their trail or didn't bother to try.