Chapter 92: Off Course
There had been a guard at the door when they’d come out, but when Simon reached the side entrance they’d used before, he was missing. Had he joined in the defense, or was he part of the attack? There was no way to know that, but the psycho vibes that Kaylee had been putting out made him fear it was the latter, not the former.
It killed him that he had to run away from that conversation when she was obviously more than ready to spill her guts to him, but he could hardly spare the time to scroll through the quest text to figure out what it was he was supposed to be doing here.
People were dying, and the fact that the portal had brought him here before the killing started meant that he was supposed to stop that from happening. At least, he was pretty sure that’s what it meant. Normally, he arrived either right after something bad had happened or long after something bad had happened, though, so it had to mean something that he was here just before disaster struck.
As he shouldered open the door and drew his sword, he had his answer. The guard he was looking for was dead, along with several others. One of them hadn’t even had the chance to draw his sword. This was clearly a well-planned surprise attack, and he would love to know the reasons why, but there was no time for that.
Simon ran down the hall and found the door to the ballroom had been barred with a chair leg wedged between the two door handles. He thought about using a word of force but opted to kick it hard instead. Given the flimsy nature of the bar, it broke wide open without much trouble, and he found the ballroom in flames.
He’d been here only ten minutes before, but in that time, the place had been transformed. Now, instead of gentle music and the dull roar of gossip, there was panicked screaming and cries of pain. To make matters worse, someone had brought the chandelier down as well. So what had been a brightly lit room full of well-dressed partygoers had become a chaotic mix of shadows and blood, and when several people ran toward him as he forced open the door, the only thing that stayed his hand was the bulky silhouettes of the dresses.
It was unlikely that middle-aged women were the ones behind this. So, he let them pass and stepped forward, finding his real targets by the firelight glinting off their weapons. Most men in the room had little more than decorative daggers on them, but the few that seemed responsible for the killing bore swords and axes, and they quickly homed in on Simon.
“One of the guards got missed, looks like,” one man called out to his compatriots.
Then, just like that, three men were advancing cautiously toward him. Simon could have tried to beat the answers out of one of them. He could have baited them with insults and questions to learn what their grievance was, but the truth was that right now, he didn’t care.