Soul Clap its Hands and Sing

Petrus and his guard had tipped the balance against the Nikaphoreans shockingly well. Their crossbows proved surprisingly ineffective, between his nephew’s magic and the guard’s heavy armor, and as soon as they needed to reload, many of the captive Yellows had joined the fray against them with fists, woodworking tools, and whatever weapons their fallen foes dropped.

Valens felt content to leave them to it, then, and focus his efforts on the Leupin. Their fight had spilled out onto the racetrack, and those who yet remained in the stands watched and cheered like they were witnessing the gladiatorial games of pagan days.

Disappointingly few did. The imperial box was empty, with no sign that it had been overrun while still occupied; by all appearances, the emperor had taken flight by some secret passage, and the mob had moved to head him off to the palace. Probably with the false Valens at their head.

Valens and the Leupin circled each other. The long-legged monster stepped over the spine of the racetrack, and Valens stalked around the end of the spine near the starting gates, watching lines of attack around the Kamuti obelisk set at its end.

The Leupin dropped to a crouch, and charged from his left. Valens stepped in towards the obelisk, putting his shoulder to the end of the racetrack spine and holding his sword up straight. The monster dashed around the corner, starting to bite down, but pulled its head back when confronted with steel and flame.

It came on too fast, however, to come to a sudden stop. A slight incline of his sword-tip, and Valens raked it across the flank. The resulting cut was shallow, but long, and black smoke billowed from it.

Rather than attempt another pass at speed, the Leupin crouched low as it turned, sliding to a halt where he could smell its rotten breath. This close, at an angle now almost completely reversed, it could bite before he could bring his sword around for a full swing.

So instead, he slammed it in the teeth with his pommel and crossguard. Sixty years ago, could not have sustained the layer of sand and aura of flame he had conjured at the beginning of the fight. Though the exact degree varied spell to spell, it always required substantial mental focus to sustain a pure Elemental spell for more than a few seconds after the corresponding Sign had been broken.

But he had spent much of those six decades practicing under pressure, against monsters like this one. All the sand balled around his fists and hilt, and as the crossguard broke one of the monster’s canines clean off its jaw, fire spewed across the tongue and down the throat beyond.

It let out a ululating sound, which rose and fell between a bone-shaking low and an ear-splitting high. For a second, that was all it could do.

A second was all Valens needed. He sidestepped the monster, raised his sword, and brought a fifth-talent of steel down on its neck.

Valens then climbed onto the spine behind the obelisk, to get clear of the smoke that would continue to emanate from the corpse for a moment. He reached out psychically, through all four of the tethers he had in place.

Petrus showed him the inside of the Yellow pit, with most of the Nikaphoreans dead, and the remainder now captive to the pit-crew they had held a moment before.

Nothing from Atia. Completely blocked.

A faint impression of anticipation from Hadrian, but this too was stopped up by some outside force, if a little less strongly; the nobleman was alive, that much he could tell, but he could not send or receive any complex ideas.

“Rufio?”

“Valens? Valens, King’s grace, you’re alive!”

“Are you at the palace?”

“I’m on the acropolis. Headed back to the palace from the cathedral. Valens, I was attacked by a Shadowman mimicking Atia. I need to find her.”

“So you do. Find Hadrian too, if you can, and then get out of there. Alexios is headed back, with an angry mob on his tail. Most of the hippodrome poured out after him; I exaggerate little to say it was half the city.”

“How? Did someone orchestrate this? Hojuzite spies? The Nikaphoreans? …You?”

“Petrus did it, without my knowledge. He got all the racing teams in on it, as well as the Nikaphoreans, and King-knows-who else. I do have to say I’m impressed, except for the part where the Nikaphoreans, predictably, have tried to take over the whole operation. They’ve gone and made their own alliance with the Bolthoi; there’s a Shadowman wearing my face at the head of that mob. Watch out for any soldiers wearing the badge of the Aplakis family, as well; it’s a yellow acorn.”

“Nikaphoreans, Shadowmen, Aplakei… anyone else I should watch out for? Are Alexios and his guards going to kill me on sight?”

“Don’t go looking for a chance to find out. I’m counting on you to get the others to safety, Rufio. I need to kill my own doppelganger, before the Nikaphoreans accidentally hand the whole Empire over to the Bothoi.”

The connection started to fade; a block came over it, like the other two.

Valens ran back into the Yellow pit, and threw open the gates to the street beyond. From there, he could see the main body of the crowd, now fully stirred to a riot with clubs and firebrands waving, funneling out of the square where weeks earlier five men had been sent up to the gallows, but only three had hanged. Some bands fanned out to wreck havoc on soft targets, torching this government building or looting that warehouse, but those genuinely swept up in the fury of the mob crashed like a wave upon the city acropolis. On the winding road leading up from the square to the imperial palace, a shield wall of the Vigla, that militia which under less adverse circumstances did a commendable job of maintaining law and order in the streets of Aureliopolis, broke under the sheer weight of human bodies pressing up that incline with murder on their lips.

“Petrus!” he shouted back, “How do I fix this mess? Is there any way I can get to that palace, ahead of that mob? A passage through the catacombs? Some spell that can place me instantly within the palace?”

“There is a passage, a route through the catacombs that leads into the ruins below the palace, but Alexios would have shut it behind him when he used it to escape the hippodrome. Maybe it could be opened again with a few Earth spells, but if you aren’t careful, you might well cause a cave-in, maybe even tear a long sinkhole across the center of the city. There is a Stellar spell I could use to teleport you, but moving a living thing by such a means is complex, taxing, and dangerous. You would be sent alone. I would barely be able to form a coherent thought for several minutes afterwards, you I’d be in no position to follow you or send you aid. I would need a direct line of sight to whatever surface the spell would leave you standing on. And, should that line of sight intersect something that interferes with Celestial magic– say, the smoke given off by the bodies of shadowspawn, or those artifacts the Nikaphoreans used to block it across the city for sixty years– the results would be… well, at least you would be dead too quickly to feel anything.”

“I think that last point rules out your sending me within the walls, even if you could see some rooftop on which to place me from here. I was having trouble communicating with my companions a moment ago, and…” he paused, considering. “You wouldn’t happen to know where the young Sixtus man of my company got to, this morning?”

“Gaius Sixtus Hadrianus is at that gatehouse, the one on the edge of the acropolis leading directly into the palace. He, his father’s men, and those of the guards who could be safely bough off are waiting to let those rioters in.”

“...So he was in on this conspiracy of yours. Rufio managed to tell me about a Shadowman that attacked him; you wouldn’t happen to know anything of how that came about, would you?”
“The Nikaphoreans were to have agents tailing Rufio and Atia, to distract or detain them should they try to involve themselves in today’s coup. I didn’t want them interfering, and I especially didn’t want them to get themselves hurt trying. I selected the Nikaphoreans, out of all involved factions, for this task, because I knew they had agents with some highly effective means of magical disguise, who could blend in wherever in the city your companions went today. I did not know the details of these agents and their capabilities were so… horrific.”

Though Valens said nothing, did not turn to face his nephew, Petrus could be heard physically recoiling, staggering back at the rage that poured over their psychic link.

“I loved you as a son, Petrus. And it wasn’t mere charity that led me to invite you to the palace when your father passed, King rest his soul. I knew you would do well at court, but when I saw just how well… My own desires, worthiness, legacy, those were all secondary considerations in why I seized the throne, all those years ago. I thought you were going to be the savior of the Rhatian Empire, once you were ready to rule.”

Valens turned to face him. Petrus was on his knees, tears running down his face.

“Rufio told me he was attacked in the cathedral, just as he was leaving it. That means teleporting me onto the dome should be safe. I’m going to rig up a grappling hook from these reins and wheel-rims, so I can get down once I’m there. You’re going to send me, I’m going to correct your grievous lapse in judgement… and if I find my daughter dead, I’m coming back here to kill you.”

Petrus nodded, and began the long incantation for the spell.