Book 2: Chapter 31: Bugged

  The bedroom was grave silent. The sort of quiet that didn’t feel peaceful, just the absence of noise. Though what mattered was that Eric was breathing. That was the first thing Alex checked.

  His friend lay still, his form carefully tucked into the blankets. They had set two enchanted cooling pads pressed beneath his collar to help with the rising fever. He looked like someone who’d gone ten rounds with the universe’s spiciest hot sauce, and there was no doubt in who had won..

  Allie sat beside the bed, unmoving. She looks down at him, just watching, and waiting for… well anything really. Her fingers tapped against her knee in an off-tempo rhythm, Alex guessed that she probably didn’t notice she was even doing it.

  “Let me know if anything changes,” Alex murmured.

  Allie didn’t look up. “It already has.” He left the room before she could say more.

  The rest of the squad had gathered around the common table, its surface still marked from their earlier war-board setup, now half-cleared of glyphs and illusions. There were plates of untouched food that rested, now cold, along the sideboard of the table. Someone had lit the wall sconces and set them too high, casting long shadows across the chairs and throughout the room.

  Garret was the first to speak. “Well. We made it out of the garden without starting a war.”

  Lance snorted. “Barely.”

  Kate was standing near the far window, arms crossed. “We got the Vault to agree to a duel, outplayed Auralde, shook the church’s cage and we’re still alive. That’s something.”

  “That’s blood in the water,” Devon corrected, seated with his head in his hands. He didn’t look up. “The Metalworkers guild is now bolstered to vote against Auralde, yeah, but Sanvek will still be against us. Not to mention, Vess won’t let this go. I humiliated her.”

  “Good,” said Zach quietly.

  Alex sank into a chair beside the board, rubbing at the bruises that still ached from the poison’s aftermath. He hadn’t even changed out of the fancy garden summit clothes. None of them had.

  “Church is split,” Allie said from the doorway, voice heavy. “We managed to ensure Theralyn will argue for us. But Deros... he’s watching. And the older clergy are listening to him more than they’re pretending not to.”

  “And House Thorneth?” Lance asked.

  “They’re spooked. They definitely are the culprits behind they leyforge, or they know about it at the very least.”

  Garret leaned forward. “The good kind of spooked or the kind that makes people disappear in alleys?”

  “The kind that means we poked something sharp,” Alex said. “And they bled just enough to remind themselves they’re not gods.”

  No one spoke for a moment, then Henry turned from where he tended to his plant. “Master Halraen offered a formal trial.”

  Devon blinked. “Wait, a trial?”

  “Dueling rite,” Lance clarified. “Public fight between two chosen warriors, structured, witnessed. He wants to see what we’re made of, and the other Sect wants to see how serious we are.”

  “They’ll be watching our choices,” Henry added, voice even. “Not just who we send into the ring, but why. We already cleared Kate to be our fighter.”

  Alex nodded slowly. “That’s what all of this has been about.”

  Kate’s gaze swept the table. “We don’t get to act surprised anymore. Everyone’s watching now. I’ll win the fight, so Henry and Lance can secure Halraen’s vote, and it’ll be a public display so Lady Caerwyn is no longer unsure of our capabilities, securing her vote as well”

  “And we have half the church,” Allie added, rejoining them. “After the garden fiasco, the Mother has decided to place her trust in us.”

  Zach was the last to speak, voice low. “They planted a garden full of knives. And now they’re waiting to see who bleeds first.”

  Alex looked down at the table. The glyphs were gone, the enchantments were dim, but in his mind, he still saw the pieces. Votes. Allies. Threats.

  The days ahead would be hard. Two days until the vote, that was it.

  But they were still here.

  Still playing.

  ***

  By some miracle, but most likely lots of effort on Allie’s part, Eric was mostly up and back to his normal self by morning. Dark bags still hung under his eyes, and stark lines etched his exhausted face. But the color had returned to him somewhat, and he no longer shook and shuttered from fever.

  Alex found him in the common room already eating some breakfast and looking over the glyph table. “Hey, feeling better I see.”

  He only got a grunt and wave of a hand in reply. But that was good enough for him.

  “You fleshsacks are much more reliant than I first gave you credit for.”

  Humans are known for their reliance.

  “No, Earthborn Behemoths are known for their resilience. Humans are known for their reproduction. Still, something could be said for your species ability to survive the harshest of circumstances.”

  What the fuck is an Earthborn Behemoth? Wait no, don’t even tell me. I don’t want to know. Just… thanks for noticing humans got grit, I guess.

  “You are very welcome, grit textured meat boy!”

  He rolled his eyes, grabbed a fruit that looked like a cross between an apple and a pear, and sat on the couch. By the time he had finished his “breakfast’ the others hard already started filtering in for the morning.

  Once again, a new round of congratulations went out to Lance and Peter, how had also now entered the Adept Tier of their mage cores. There rest may complain twice as hard, but Alex knew they were all very close behind.

  He check his abilities to see where his own progress lay.

  It really wasn’t a whole lot of movement. Which made sense, as he hadn’t really been focusing on his cultivation as of late. There was the whole problem of the disruptive bracers when they were traveling with the Teraxum regiment, then they got hit with the politics of the kingdom. He just hadn’t had a lot of time to focus towards his cultivation.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “You know if you put some experience points into wisdom…”

  Shut up you damn rock.

  His little spat with Obby got interrupted as a loud crack!, sounded from across the room. He looked over to see Holly apologetically looking down at the stand-up mirror where she stood across the suite’s common area.

  It wasn’t a big deal, just one mirror in the entire palace of lavishness. He was just about to turn away, accepting the act as an accident when he saw her face change. From shame, to curiosity, then to worry. Her eyes flickered upward, finding his.

  He darted over, half-expecting the entire frame to be broken. But discovered that it hadn’t shattered, just knocked loose, tilted sideways, its edge wedged into the baseboard. But what had caught her attention wasn’t the fall. It was what was glowing behind the glass.

  “Look,” she pointed it out to him immediately.

  Fine, thin glyph-lines etched along the inner frame of the mirror, woven in a spiral barely thicker than a thread. They pulsed faintly, just barely active, and drawing power. Scrying glyphs, it was undeniable. Certainly not their own local enchantment work. Definitely laex’s and not Devon’s.

  “Uh—Dev?” Holly called out next to him, voice louder than she meant. “We need your eyes on something.”

  He didn’t wait for Devon to arrive. He picked up the large mirror carefully, tilting the frame the rest of the way onto the plush rug, then pressing his fingers to the frame to trace the glyphs directly. They buzzed under his touch like barely dormant circuitry.

  Devon came jogging out from the study alcove, shirt half-buttoned, hair a mess. “Please tell me you didn’t break the one expensive thing in this room.”

  “I didn’t. The wind did. Accidentally.” Holly insisted.

  Devon knelt beside her, blinking. Then stared at the glyphs. His face lost its usual color. “…Okay, that’s a problem.”

  “No shit,” Alex said. He couldn’t see much, the runes and glyphwork were tiny. His eyes flickered with aether sight and he pulled out his Echo Memory Lens from the Dungeon Shop, trying to get a better grasp of what he was seeing.

  “Damn. They hid it inside the glamour enchantment casting,” he muttered. “I missed it. The illusion layer must’ve redirected aether reflection outward, obscuring everything underneath.”

  Devon squinted closer as well. “No. Not a glamour layer. A glamour sleeve. It’s shielding the entire scry array from magical pingback, front back and sides. This is advanced work, gotta be Intermediate Tier minimum.”

  “He’s pretty good, and he’s right. It’s intermediate tier glyphwork for sure.” Obby confirmed Devon’s suspicions. Alex confirmed this to the others as well.

  “Who can even do this?” Holly asked, straightening. “Not some standard scribe.”

  “No,” Devon said. “This was noble house or royal or high-clergy level.”

  Alex ran a hand through his hair. “How long do you think it’s been here?”

  Devon’s fingers hovered near a small sigil cluster, likely the trigger point. “Long enough. Could’ve been set after we moved in… or before.”

  Holly folded her arms. “So the entire time we’ve been here? They’ve been spying on where we meet, where we plan.”

  Alex’s voice dropped lower. “Where we argue. Where we disagree. Where you plan out your schematics.” He looked pointedly at Devon. A pulse of silence spread through the suite, thick with the weight of implication.

  Then Alex exhaled and stood. “Devon, help me corrupt the signal, softly. Not enough to let them know we found it. Just enough to scramble any audio for now, so we can think of what to do.”

  Devon nodded. “Absolutely. I’ll make it sound like Garret singing in the bath.”

  “Do that and I’m forcing you to listen to it too,” Garret called from over their shoulders..

  Alex didn’t smile, his eyes flicked to Holly gratefully. “You caught it,” he said.

  She nodded, but her face stayed tight. “Not on purpose.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “You still did.”

  They all stood around the cracked mirror for another moment. It reflected them strangely now, distorted slightly where the glamour had peeled away. It only took Devon and he a few minutes to alter the Glyphwork. Mostly due to Alex secretly following Obby’s instructions. But they managed to scramble the receiver on their side, and send out a false pre-recorded signal to whoever was listening.

  “So what do we do now?” Zach asked.

  “Pretend we didn’t notice, feed them fake intel?” Garret offered.

  “No,” Peter stepped forward then, a large smile on his face. Unlike usual, this smile seemed rather scary to Alex when he saw it. “I have a plan.” He said.

  ***

  The plan was simple. That’s what made it dangerous. Peter had always been good at quiet things. Small calculations. Quiet strategies. He sat in the room across from the suite. He stayed near the doorway, ready to move when the time was right. And the time was nearly upon them.

  “Anyone coming?” Garret asked from behind the drape.

  Peter didn’t look up, he just pressed a finger to his lips and whispered. “Three minutes. Right on time, if they took the bait.”

  Zach leaned against the table close by, arms crossed. “And if they don’t?”

  “They will,” Peter said. He said with an absolute clam.. “A trap’s only a gamble if you didn’t set the cheese yourself.”

  The bait had been planted that morning, a casual conversation between Peter and Kate, just loud enough to be overheard by any listening glyphs. A fake plan about smuggling a message to House Caerwyn through the inner suite’s vents, to be picked up at noon by the house servants. A nonsensical route, full of inconsistencies and impossibilities. The kind of thing a real plan would never risk.

  But they weren’t trying to sneak anything out. They were waiting to see who came in.

  And once everyone “left” the suite for the day. Peter, Zach and Garret had circled back to stake out the spot outside the suite’s door.

  The knock came soft. Two taps.

  Peter was already moving. “That’s him.”

  Lance opened the door slow. A man in plain grey robes stood there, head bowed, a polished serving tray balanced between his hands. He looked like a lesser priest or a courier, maybe. An older man, common enough in appearance to be nondescript.

  The man opened the suite door, and carefully slipped his way inside. “I was told to bring this—”

  Lance closed the distance from across the hall and pressed a palm to the man’s chest, pinning him to the wall. Garret stepped out of the curtain and helped pull the man inside. Zach entered the suite behind them all. The door slammed shut behind him.

  The tray clattered to the floor, silver lid spinning before wobbling to a stop.

  “You should sit,” Peter said gently. “Before you collapse.”

  “I— I’m just a… I was sent to deliver...”

  “Wrong room,” Garret said, grinning. “This suite’s off-limits to self-appointed spies.”

  The man looked pale now. Sweat started to bloom along his hairline, he pulled at his shirt collar like it was actively trying to choke him to death. “I didn’t… I’m not—”

  “Lying gets people hurt,” Zach said, voice low. “So does silence.”

  Peter stepped forward and knelt beside the tray, lifting it carefully. Underneath the lid was nothing. No food, or drink. Peculiar for a servant who was bringing something to the suite. But inside the base of the tray, concealed under a false lining, he found a glimmer of glyph-stone, part of a relay crystal similar in function to an earth walkie-talkie.

  The servant saw them pull it out of the serving tray, and the last of his calm cracked. “I was paid,” he blurted. “Just money! That’s all. It wasn’t my idea.”

  “Who paid you?” Peter asked, soft as rustling paper.

  The man shook his head. “I wasn’t supposed to know. It was… through a priest’s office… via House Vaelros. A name, Careth Gavan. One of their internal agents.” He clutched at his robe, voice hoarse. “They said it wasn’t an official order, just quiet surveillance. Everyone wants insurance these days, right?”

  Peter exchanged a look with Zach. Garret just whistled. “Your going to have to wait here a moment.” Garret said cheerfully.

  Alex arrived a few minutes later, summoned from the library hall by Peter. He looked between the bound servant and the enchanted crystal found in the serving tray, then to Peter.

  “Wasn’t expecting success so fast,” he muttered.

  Peter stood, dusting off his hands. “They were complacent. They thought we were still distracted., form all the ongoing activities today, plus the raucous from the garden yesterday.”

  “Mmm, probably right.” Alex looked to the servant. “House Vaelros, huh?”

  The man nodded. “I swear… I didn’t think it was… like this.”

  Alex didn’t respond right away. He turned, walking toward the long table at the center of the suite where the war board still sat half-completed. “Vaelros never reached out,” he said aloud. “Never sent an envoy. Never issued a vote position. Now we know why.”

  “They already had eyes in the room,” Peter said.

  “More than that,” he muttered. “They’ve been selling us out, literally. Everything they heard, pieces of it must’ve gone to Thorneth. To the Sanvek Guild. To even Auralde.” He was quiet a long moment. Then he looked up at the servant, “Send word. You’ll send a message to House Vaelros.”

  Garret blinked. “You want to invite them?”

  “I want them at the table,” he said. “They’ve already seen what we are, what we are doing. Let’s show them what we can be. An ally”

  Zach arched an eyebrow. “Not sure if that’s wise.”

  “It’s not about wise,” Alex said. “It’s about leverage.”

  Peter nodded once. “They’ve played their hand. Now we get to ask how badly they want to pretend it never happened.”

  “Exactly,” Alex sat up on the table and clapped his hands. “Things like this, the Arcanuum have punishments for. Once they are informed, those punishments can’t be stopped. So its in everyone’s best interest that doesn’t happen, right?”

  The servant in front of him gulped audibly.

  “Tonight, we will use the mirror as the means of conveyance. At midnight, no sooner, no later. If they do not respond, we inform Arcanuum Vaunt. Tell them that, understood?” He said.

  The man simply nodded. They cut him loose, and he ran from the room far faster than Alex had anticipated. The door rattled shut behind him.

  “Well, that was smoother than I had imagined,” he stepped off from the table and cracked his knuckles. “Should we head to the Azure Vault Sect? I heard they had some entertainment arranged for the day.”

  The three men smiled at him and nodded.