Day 5: Chambers of Blood | Chapter 36 | PoV: Aisha
It was a new day. The suns began to rise up from the horizon, somewhere deep and far beyond the uncertain haze of the tempest.
Aisha was about as rested and fed as her body had allowed. Which amounted to lingering rings under her eyes and the occasional yawn. As for food, she wasn't hungry, or so she convinced herself.
Today was the day she would kill the Prince. No more weird diversions or putting it off. She wasn't going to drag herself off to see Rafiq or anything like that.
Her sheer amount of exhaustion had let her sleep a few hours, at least. Her lack of energy and rumbling stomach had fit a few bites into the endless maw of grief in her lower torso. Both would have to be enough.
Aisha and Fazl crept closer to the palace. Well, not “crept” so much as “strolled.” Walking to end the royal family was but another walk through the city.
“Are you going to use all your energy trying to create a [Flight] or are you going to save some to support me?” Aisha asked as aeolian mana continued to flicker behind her.
“It's fine. I'll have enough. Plus, finding order for this spell will be a great boon,” Fazl argued.
Aisha walked in front, again. She could not see any of Fazl’s body language. “Will you be able to find it at all? How can you be sure a [Flight] spell exists?”
Aisha got her fill of watching body language by seeing people continue to circumnavigate her. It made her wonder why guards hadn't approached her and commanded detainment. Why not? What was going on with that?
Actually, where were all the guards? There weren't any wandering the streets in patrols or standing sentinel.
The street gave way into a large, open plaza. Seats surrounded it under pergolas. A statue stood in the center of the plaza. It contained three unnamed, generic mages immortalized in some metal. One thermal mage, one aeolian mage, and one temporal mage stood tall with wands up, as if striking some empowering pose. The symbolism was about casting spells to keep away the tempest and allowing for the settlement of Glorestra. Yay to government-issued propaganda? At least it was on Aisha's side? Eh . . .
At the other end of the plaza, a great palace watched it over. It was multiple stories high with generous windows and topped by blue and white domes and spires. If a fortress lost all practical function and became a show of opulence, that was this beast.
That which held a monster—the First Prince of Glorestra.
“How are you going to get inside? What will you do if he's not there?” Fazl asked important questions.
Which was why Aisha whirled around and gave him a glare. “You're asking this in public.”
“Ah . . . No one that matters will hear. Also we're still being vague.”
Aisha snorted.
“What about the royal guard?”
“What about them?” Aisha smirked. Guards surrounded the palace, somehow less life-like than the statue itself. They wore heavier plate armor than normal guards and had feather-tipped helmets and little capes that only got maybe halfway down their backs. They held long, sharp, pokey pokey murder weapons. A “halberd” or something. Aisha didn't care. It was all a waste of resources and function. These guys probably did a worse job than the normal city guard.
“How are you—?”
Aisha turned around and continued making her way through the plaza, towards the palace.
The guards carved a path to the palace entrance with their positions, two lines of them facing each other protruded from the palace. It was not unlike how the guards were set up along the stairs to the legislature.
Aisha stepped up to this pathway. Fewer people walked near here to get to wherever they were going, opting to be further away in the plaza.
A handful of people loitered around. It looked like richer individuals, sometimes their families. They either stood and talked business or casually, while the families took in the sights and the kids analyzed the guards and their frivolous uniform from a safe distance. With all the silks and feathers, Aisha wondered how effective the guard costume would be in the bedroom. Actually, Aisha would bet some military historian got off to the uniform—what? Aisha shook the thought away.
“Aisha?” Fazl asked. “Don't tell me you're going to use the front entra—”
Aisha passed by the first set of flanking guards.
“You are going to use the front doors, aren't you. This is stupid.”
Aisha passed by another two.
No citizens lingered beyond this point.
A pair of guards converged on the pathway and faced Aisha. “The grounds beyond this point are for palace personnel only."
The guards crossed their halberds, making it clear that this was the end of the path.
Aisha waved a hand in dismissal. She dropped a time bubble around herself and Fazl and navigated around the guards. She dropped it once she passed them. She wanted to save as much mana as she could.
“Aisha!” Fazl cried. He had stayed behind.
The guards turned swiftly as they realized what happened. To Aisha's credit, they hadn't jumped.
“Please forgive Aisha Al-Jinan. She's lost her mind.” A nervous laugh escaped Fazl.
“Aisha Al-Jinan? Oh . . . Stop!” A guard called.
Oh. Was that it? People hadn't stopped her because they hadn't known who she was? No. That didn't make sense because the normal people had left room for her. Was it because they had known who she was or something else? Maybe they were making room for a disabled aeolian mage? No. They had been casting glances at her. Had some negative statement been made about temporal mages? . . . That couldn't be it . . . Argh. Whatever.
The next pair of guards blocked the path. All four held their halberds horizontally, point facing Aisha.
More guards came to surround Aisha's location.
“You're under arrest for the murder of eight temporal mages.”
Aisha blinked. That number was at eight now? She wanted to argue that she hadn't killed any of them. It did not matter, they would not suddenly stop and not arrest her.
If Fazl's words had caused this situation . . .
Chains clinked. Like Heliux she would let herself be arrested.
Aisha dropped a time bubble and swung a punch forward. At a blinding speed for the guards around her, her swift punch powered by muscle slammed into the chest of the front-right guard.
Pain shot through Aisha's fist as she had tried to beat through metal.
Before anyone else could process what was happening, she swung her staff at the side of the left guard.
She enveloped the right guard with her bubble.
His body scrunched forward and he fell to his knees. Even in armor, a punch from Aisha could pack a lot of power.
Aisha included the left guard, who stumbled back from her swing.
She found her opening and darted through, dropping the bubble on the guards, then herself entirely after crossing between pairs and pairs of guards, reaching the palace doors in maybe one real second.
Such a fast bubble strained Aisha, and so she did not want to keep it up for too long.
Although, she had been able to cast [Temporal Sundering] after hours of a weak time bubble. Yet they got harder for the user the more time she sped up or slowed down. She had probably extended as much energy as those hours as she had in those maybe thirty seconds. Which amounted to maybe one second for those outside her bubble. Had she really sped up time thirty-or-some times?
Aisha tugged on one of the door handles.
The door did not budge.
She . . . pushed?
Yeah, no, it was locked.
The guards ran towards her. They would be upon her again in a second—
Aisha threw up a time bubble and abandoned the door. She headed off to the side to find a window.
She came across one in only a few paces. A glass window sat carved into the tan, stone wall. Curtains on the other side hid the room from view.
Aisha swung her staff at the glass, cracking it. She repeated until she shattered a large amount of the window—enough to climb through without being stabbed by shards of glass. In other words, almost the entire window ended up as glass shards inside the palace.
Aisha put a leg on the windowsill and then pushed herself through. The curtains parted for her.
She hopped down into a minefield of glass shards. Hopefully her boots would be able to keep them all from poking her feet. Most of the glass had fallen nearer the wall, thanks to the curtains. Some had propelled further, however.
Aisha stepped into the room, dropping her time bubble and—
A man snorted. “Well hello Al-Jinan. It's nice seeing you here. We thought we'd have to search the whole city for you, but His Highness reassured that you would come here.”
Aisha squinted into the darkness, in the direction of the voice.
She was in a spacious hallway—spacious, of course, because it was the royal palace. A carpet ran along the entire floor. There was enough room in the hallway for multiple people walk side-by-side in the hallway. Doors lined the wall opposite from the windows. The hallway to the left immediately opened up into a foyer. It continued further down into the darkness to the right.
Why was it so dark in here? . . .
Light and darkness flickered. Ah, there were sconces on the walls for candles and there were cute little supports and beams up above for strings of llumifruits to appear more elegant.
The darkness was unnatural.
It pulsed through the room, fighting back the light and winning.
Until the entire hallway plunged into an eerie dark purple. The warmth of surface heat, llumifruit light, and candle burning was replaced by a complete absence of all.
A cold chill ran down Aisha's spine.
Curious and weary, Aisha took a peek back out the window.
All the guards were gone. All the people in the plaza were gone. Fazl was nowhere to be seen. Aisha only saw shadows—faint impressions that moved. Yet, no light cast those. There was no light at all, just a tiny amount of visibility like a blanket across the world. The sky above was black.
Aisha quickly turned back to face the interior palace, not wanting to be caught off guard.
Something swooshed in the air as if in some fancy attempt at brandishing—a staff
Aisha turned her attention to the foyer. A robed figure appeared in her vision a few paces away from Aisha.
“Care for a rematch? One I'm not going to lose, this time.”
Aisha heard dog-like growls from behind her. The shiver froze her in place. Aisha knew that there weren't dogs in this weird reality.