The Rebels of Kapur

Had I been blessed with misfortune? More accurately, was my own luck stat sitting somewhere in the negatives? I wondered this because it seemed like fortunes were swinging my way, an auspicious romance waited on the horizon. But then, as if the goddess herself had gotten involved, the capital city of the Caerleon Empire fell under siege.

What I saw seemed ripped straight out of black and white war films from my old world. In the far distance, bursts of light signaled another round of indiscriminate barrages, leveling homes and storefronts and stables. The proud outer walls on the periphery of the capital fared no better against the fierce determination of dozens of explosive projectiles. They fell, and the banners of the empire burned on the crumbling ramparts.

“My lady!” Emily rushed onto the balcony, where Vivian was hiding beneath the balustrades and covering her ears, “My lady, oh thank goodness I found you. We have to get out of here!”

"Where are the others?" Vivian yelled, following Emily into the relative safety of the hallway.

"Stefan and Vladimir are with your mother and father," the maid explained, "They're descending to the carriages now to leave."

"Let's meet them there then."

Another barrage slammed the castle walls, shaking the interior with low groans. The castle was showing its age. Lady and maid made their way back to the central banquet hall, which they found thoroughly vacated. Chandeliers had dislodged from the ceilings during the attack, leaving glass strewn across the floor and hidden in the depths of punch bowls.

"Watch your step, my lady," Emily warned.

They walked cautiously across the hall, towards a tunnel on the other end that led to the castle stables. On either side of the banquet room, fire from the castle grounds rose up to the stained glass windows. Smoke accumulated there and appeared as ominous apparitions.

Meanwhile, a deep worry came to my mind. In my panic, I reviewed Vivian's attribute menu and took stock of her current abilities and traits. In the last few weeks, by own design, Vivian had only ever invested in social stats. Her physical stats like strength, stamina, and speed, had been completely ignored.

Had I read the rules of the game wrong? Was I actually supposed to transform Vivian into a warrior class that could navigate the treacherous fields of battle? Where had that even been foreshadowed by the events leading to the Royal Ball? Most importantly, how could Vivian survive without the necessary traits in her physical tree?

I couldn’t help but feel that this was my fault (because it was), and the weight of my mistakes fell upon me. Stupid, stupid, stupid! I had tunnel visioned so obnoxiously on turning Vivian into a socialite that I had overlooked the unexpected possibilities of a wartime event. It was so obvious in retrospect!

Part of me wanted desperately to blame Vivian. Technically, the intelligence stat enhanced one’s magical prowess, but Vivian possessed no magical ability to start with. So, it was Vivian’s fault that her natural affinities didn’t align with my build.

But realistically, she had done herself enormous favors when she had ignored my instructions for weeks. Vivian’s physical attributes were much higher than I would’ve liked before, but now they could make the difference between life and death.

A new series of explosions blasted me out of my worries and into the dangerous present. The banquet hall quaked. The roof lurched and buckled. Support beams splintered and snapped, falling to the ground alongside unhinged ceramic tiles and shards of glass.

“Look out!” Emily screamed.

The maid lunged forward and tackled Vivian to the ground, trying to protect her with her own body. Vivian set her eyes above, where a wooden buttress hurdled toward the two of them. She squeezed her eyes and looked away and I knew we were thinking the same thing.

In my own cowardice, I couldn’t look either, and as I shut off my display I heard the snap of a finger.

The sounds within the banquet hall quieted, reducing themselves to muted thuds and thumps as if the noise had been passed through a dampener. When I opened my display, wooden pillars and sharp glass hung suspended in midair, all of them wrapped in a familiar cyan luminescent film.

"Diane!" Vivian gasped with relief, "I was sure I was dead."

"Less talking, more moving out of the way," the grand enchantress grimaced, thin lines of blood dripping down her forehead, "I've already used most of my energy keeping this place from falling apart."

Vivian and Emily scrambled and hurried to Diane, who was followed by an unexpected guest. Guin Veridian acknowledged the two with a nod and inched closer behind Diane, whose ashen torn clothes and bruised arms suggested she had seen more than her fair share of the attack.

"Come on, they don't bite," Diane sighed, "Where were you two headed? This is the most vulnerable part of the castle."

"The stables on the grounds," Vivian explained, "Mother and father are headed there with Stefan and Vlad."

"Then we're coming along," Diane said, "The prince was the first to flee, along with his useless knights. Left the poor girl here."

"What's going on, out there?" Vivian asked.

"You really want to ask that with all this rubble in the air?" Diane rolled her eyes and began to move, "Come on, the tunnels are more secure. We can talk more there."

Together, the four ladies walked briskly across the hall until they were safely within the fortified stone tunnel. Diane snapped her fingers again, her face wincing as she did, and the banquet hall collapsed into rubble and dust, leaving only the torchlight inside the tunnel for illumination.

"This way. The grounds aren't too far," Diane motioned.

"What if the stables have already been destroyed?"

"The stables are behind the castle," Diane explained, "In fact, the staircase down the hall is next to the rear wall of the castle. So if the staircase caves in and kills us all, that's when you can start worrying about your family, my dear."

"Great. You look terrible by the way."

"And I could've left you buried under the rubble. You're lucky I'm so fond of Emily," Diane shrugged, “Now, Miss Veridian, watch your step.”

“You said that the prince and his knights fled?” Vivian inquired, “That doesn’t sound like Arty.”

“Artimael evacuated the king and the ministers of the royal court,” Diane replied, “They’ve long fled the castle by now. Looks like the royal capital is going to be captured without a fight.”

“And the knights?”

“You think Artimael will command his knights to charge head first into Kapur artillery?” Diane scoffed, “You think the knights would even obey such an order?”

“So it’s the rebels? They’re here?”

“Who else could it be?”

“All this time,” Vivian murmured, “I thought if we postponed the vote on the Peace Decree, there would be a chance for peace.”

“Such idealists, you Greymoors,” Diane repeated.

Diane led the others down a long winding staircase. Every few moments, the walls vibrated and shuddered, shaking clouds of dust and a musky aged odor into the stairwell. Guin would stop and stare blankly at the walls as if expecting them to burst in flames, but Diane urged her to keep moving.

As they neared the bottom, I noticed Vivian breath deeply. The air up ahead must have been fresh. A moonlit entrance illuminating the rust saturated walls ahead seemed to corroborate this. Once outside, Vivian and the others found themselves basking in the hellish red glow of the burning castle behind them.

In fact, the courtyard, lined with maples and magnolias, glowed under the shadow of the inferno. Disparate patches of embers burned on the royal lawn. Up ahead, in a clearing between the trees and untouched by fire, lay the stables along with a set of familiar faces waving us towards them.

“There they are!” Vivian cried.

The Greymoor family appeared altogether alive and healthy. Vivian’s mother and father were reviewing the food stocks in the third carriage, while Vladimir and Stefan, both of whom sported a few singed spots on their clothes, had stood watch waiting for Vivian.

“We were just about to leave without you,” Stefan quipped, “I was happy to have all the food to myself.”

“Stefan.”

“Vlad, it’s the shortest joke I could come up with.”

“I hope you don’t mind two additional passengers,” Diane stepped forward.

“Anything for the Astral Viscountess,” John bowed, “But let’s cut the formalisms short and just get out of here.”

“Agreed.”

Shortly after, the three carriages of the Greymoor family, along with their two new refugees, stole away into the night. Nobody could hear the soft tapping of hooves, the groans of the carriage wheels or the trickling streams or the crunching of gravel. The eyes and ears of all were trained on the butchering of the royal capital, and all wondered where the Caerleon Empire stood, if at all, after tonight.