Liberty and Death, Chapter 68
“Cora, dear, would you indulge my penchant for the dramatic a moment, and check my Class Actives again?” Lysander asked. The sweetness of her voice was horrible coming from that awful grin she wore.
Cora complied.
“Lysander Pridelorn, [Class Actives: {Elemental Surge}, {Ascendant Thaumaturgy(Illusionist)}]... whoa, you grabbed your second active and already upgraded it?” Cora asked, checking and seeing that, yep, Lysander was out of skill points.
“A necessary step!” Lysander declared. “To be honest, looking through all the skills available to me–”
“All the skills?” Cora interrupted, “Lysander, you’ve known you had skills for all of 30 seconds, how could you–”
“Smarter than youuuu,” Lysander sang. Reminding people of that apparently put her in a playful mood, since she flicked out a finger and Cora felt the air boop her on the nose from across the room. “Now shush, dear, and listen.”
Part of Lysander's dress flowed off of her, only to be immediately replaced by the air around her, to Hawk’s audible disappointment.
The mist coalesced into an X chain motif, then into a small figure of the [Class Traitor].
“So, you think your small-time enemies have big-time backers, yes?” Lysander asked, to a chorus of nods.
The [Class Traitor] vanished to mist, which reformed into the form of Eldridge Parnassus.
“And the only possible source of that backing is Tyrinno’s gentry, correct?” She asked.
“Nay, could be a nation at odds with Tyrinno, lass,” Iain said. Lysander frowned at being questioned, and harder at being called lass.
Still, she had to concede the point.
“True, but what Cora heard last night makes that seem unlikely, doesn’t it?” She asked, to a grunt of agreement from the old campaigner.
“So, if the Chains are backed by the nobility, but not publicly so, what might that tell us?” Lysander asked.
Obviously, she had a correct answer in mind, but Cora thought it might tell them a lot of things, and wasn’t quite sure how most of them were of any use.
“They are likely not backed by all of the nobility?” Mike answered. Cora had thought of that, but wasn’t–
“Yes!” Lysander cried, “and that we can use to our advantage. Come now class, who can tell me how the skills I just bought and that information can come together?”
Illusion magic…
The Chains…
Probably only working for one noble house or faction…
“Holy shit!” Cora exclaimed. “False flag!!!”
“Exactly!” Lysander said, giving Cora an approving nod. It almost didn’t look like the way you’d look at a pet that had executed a neat trick.
“Oh aye… aye, that could work…” Iain nodded along, “be needin’ a good target though…”
“I’ve got just the one,” Cora said, finally feeling up to matching Lysander’s terrifying grin. “I don’t know if you all have been trying to forget it for as long as I have, butI’ve got a date tomorrow night. And boy howdy would I love to bring some friends.”
“My thoughts exactly, Cora, my, you have a mind for deviousness, don’t you?” Lysander said, voice kind of a soft coo. Cora had used the same one to talk to her cat, but when Lysander did it, she kind of understood why it worked on animals.
“Right now, the forces arrayed against you are allies of convenience,” Lysander declared. “We have to make that alliance deeply inconvenient for most of the noble houses of Tyrinno. An assault by the Chains on one of their gauche little soirres will accomplish that nicely, I should think!”
“Yeah… but how do we get the Chains to do something that dumb?” Hawk asked.
Jesus christ she’s lucky she’s hot.
“We don’t, Hawk,” Cora soothed, stroking a finger along one bulging bicep. “We make our big, beautiful bull-girl look like one of them, and send her through the manor’s goddamn wall!”
“Oh… OH! Oh Hell yeah!” Hawk yelled, slamming her fists together in front of Cora’s face hard enough to blow her hair back. “I am so in!”
“That enthusiasm is encouraging,” Lysander laughed. “However, you are also so recognizable. At this point, I imagine many of your are known to the powers that be in Tyrinno. This is where my magic comes in.”
She waved her hand again, though this time with visible effort, like she was turning a wheel that didn’t want to move.
An undignified ‘unf!’ of effort escaped her lips, but then the air began to move once more, shifting around Hawk.
Strands of magic spun around her, twisting and coalescing around her physique. Mottled, cancerous, flesh, horrible bulging veins, a face that no mother would even claim they loved…
Cora was now cuddling with a Shimmer Addict.
“Gah!” She yelped, pulling back. She couldn’t obviously, Hawk’s grip was iron.
“What? What!?” Hawk asked excitedly, lips now positioned at a diagonal on her forehead flapping grotesquely. “Do I look super cool in the black and red!?”
Cora glared at Lysander, who was covering what was probably a deeply feces-smeared grin with one hand, gently shaking with laughter.
“Why that!?” Cora asked. Hawk looked between the women like an anxious puppy, there really wasn’t any good reflective surface in the office for her to see herself in.
“Oh come on, Cora, have you seen the Chains send any bastards as big as your girlfriend there your way?”
“Yes!” Cora complained, “they have the Chained!”
“Oh riiiight…” Lysander chuckled, “must have slipped my mind, I’m sorry dear. Just a dress rehearsal, after all.”
“I’m a fuckin’ Shimmer Addict aren’t I?” Hawk said dejectedly, looking at her twisted hand through eyes positioned near her chin.
“Sorry babe,” Cora laughed, “now you get to know what its like to not be pretty for a second.”
Those weird chin-eyes narrowed at her, looking again between Linnea’s face, and Cora’s original visage on Lysander.
“Do you know what it’s like to not be pretty?” She asked.
“Hah! I was gangly in middle school,” Cora answered with a shrug. She returned her attention to Lysander. “Gotta say, Lys, I like–”
“Nope,” Lysander said in a warning tone, and Cora smirked at her. She’d known that would go down about as well as the Shimmer Addict jump scare
“Right, Lysander, I like this plan!” Cora continued without a hint of apology, “can you do this to all of our combat folks? I doubt this ball will have a lot of security, I mean, who would be crazy enough to do this, but we think a lot of the nobility will have levels as well, and there are sure to be some personal guards. We’re gonna want to bring the noise.”
“I can…” Lysander said, in a tone less confident than her usual, “but it will take some time. If I want these to last, and to fool, I will need to perform this spell as a ritual. Setting that up will take… oh, 8 hours maybe? And require some supplies I doubt you have on hand.”
Cora grinned at Iain.
“What do you say buddy, feel like a Bazaar run?” She asked.
An hour later, Lux had gotten Lysander set up in a cell off of the dungeon, which she’d immediately expanded using earth magic. The walls themselves had seemed to melt away, opening up the area immensely.
Ysna and a couple of other interested girls watched with open awe as Lysander began to mold the very earth to her ritual, an intricate circle appearing in the floor made of fire and stone.
While the elf magician had clearly appreciated the awe, Cora impressed upon her the need for more skilled arcanists among their forces, and once Lysander had the base down, she began to instruct Ysna in some of the easier aspects of the fire portion of her working.
That started, and so far above Cora’s head she wasn’t even really certain if they were doing anything, she got her team prepped for another Bazaar run.
Man, I used to just be able to go to the fuckin’ grocery store, she whined internally.
THINK OF IT THIS WAY
NOW WHEN YOU GO TO THE GROCERY STORE, IF YOU HIT ANY PEDESTRIANS, IT MAKES YOU STRONGER AS A PERSON!
Whoever made you really should have given you a stronger moral compass
NO, I ACTUALLY AM SUPPOSED TO BE WORSE!
Terrifying.
He did kind of have a point though. Cora had roughly a day before she got picked up by the world’s worst brother for what was likely to be an Epstein-level fucked up party.
If the Chains decided to jump her on the way to the Bazaar? Well, then she was just a little stronger when things popped off inside that place.
Fortunately, Eldridge’s ‘people’ had already been in contact with Mike, so they knew where the party would be taking place. Kyra and Tania were on their way to scope it out right now, but that left Cora’s away team slightly shorthanded.
“Fern?” Cora asked, passing the woman in the hall carrying… “okay, first off, is that a bunch of my underwear?”
“Ayup!” Fern confirmed, “weren’t much but extremely uncomfortable lingerie available to us before. But, with a few accomplished seamstresses among the rescues, they were askin’ if they could borrow some regular ones to help cut patterns and such.”
“Oh! Oh, yeah, that’s a great idea! I just, uh, kinda thought you were just being a pervert,” Cora chuckled, and Fern’s eyes twinkled.
“Oh, mayhap I am, who’s to say what else I took out of your room?” She said with a wink. She was about to push past Cora when she stopped her.
“Hold up, this,” she said, indicating the pile of silk in Fern’s arms, “isn’t actually what I wanted to talk to you about. Gotta make a Bazaar run, but Kyra and Tania are scouting, and I want to leave Iain here since he’s way more badass inside the walls. Could you tap your baddest bitch and join us in half an hour?”
Fern’s grin told Cora all she needed to know, even before she spoke.
“Oh fuck yeah, bosslady, I’ve been waiting for you to ask!”