3,900 Words
Ruling the kingdom falls into a dull rhythm following your father's conclusion. The foreign delegates go home, your brother and uncle return to their castles, and things return to their normal state of affairs in the capital. You find your days occupied with settling remarkably petty disputes, overseeing holy days including the fast of exile which lasts seven days until concluding with a feast, and managing the petty politics of court. Uncle Enrique's infrastructure projects are going swimmingly, exceeding even his most optimistic estimates. It appears as though the commoners are just as frustrated with the poor state of things and they are working extra hard to see it done quickly.
Letters and whispers pour in keeping you abreast of the public happenings abroad. Queen Yasmina of Tulah is hosting a grand concert and inviting all the best musicians in the peninsula to perform at exorbitant rates. Everyone who is anyone in elfblood Tartessia is clamoring to go including even some of her rival queens!
The King of Torreblanca has sanctioned the Six White Peaks to host a dwarfhold should they choose to accept. Negotiations are currently underway with the dwarves of the Sellon Mountains that form the border of Tartessia and Vermonde. If he's successful, you should expect the price of marble to decline considerably in the coming years.
The Queen Alessandra of al Khadra has proclaimed the horses of her domain superior to anywhere else's in the world and has named this new superior breed... after herself. Whether anyone will take it seriously remains to be seen, although you have heard the horses from the plains between the Jaburkar mountains and the central plateau to be of the finest quality.
Nothing terribly interesting, really.
Not until today at least. Spring is coming to a close soon. It's been two months and a week since you started your reign and you have been patiently biding your time, securing your rule, and improving the realm. Your sister and brother-in-law, however, have been tasked with a far more interesting task— to disrupt the black markets of the Eluctable Domingo.
That accursed master thief has been running a racket out of Alfida for ages. He's a master smuggler. It's said he can move anything from anywhere to anywhere at any time. Your father quite literally locked the city down and searched every building, one house at a time in an attempt to find him. It didn't work. It did, however, enrage the inhabitants of Alfida. The less said about that, the better. In any case, he is very elusive.
Clearly, force has not worked to root him out so you've changed strategies and gave your sister a thousand silver coins from the royal treasury to pay out bribes and gather information. So far the results have been... decent. Nothing on the Eluctable himself, of course. Gods only know how much you've have to pay in bribes to have one of his actual associates sell him out, but you have managed to disrupt some of his black market businesses.
In the last two months, you've seized a shipment of silver that was pilfered directly from your mint, busted an illegal goblin weaving business that was undercutting your local tailor's guild, and raided a smuggler's warehouse filled with contraband soma tar. The fucker has half your miners addicted to the stuff and your father was never successful in curtailing the usage of it.
The real prize, however, is the news your sister has brought to you today.
"An auction," you state.
"Yes," Maria nods her head and places a finger on a point on the map of the city. The map is old and out of date, but it's the best you have. It has all the important features like streets, landmarks, and buildings. "The goods are trafficked in through Montemayor. Basilisk poison, seven pointed chameleon pelts, and powdered Sakaz Demon horn are reported to be on the listing along with some items with minor magical enchantments."
These are all extremely expensive goods. Who the hell is buying them? It would beggar anyone in the kingdom outside you and some other large landowners.
"Who are the buyers?" you ask.
"Adventurers, mostly. These auctions are organized and carried out extremely quickly. Word gets out about them, the goods are sold, and the sellers disappear like smoke," Maria answers, "There is also an entry fee that is paid to attend the auction. It is not a trivial sum. Ten gold coins a head."
Fucking adventurers... Nothing more than a bunch of ragtag vagabonds breaking and looting things they think don't belong to anyone. If it wasn't so expensive to keep the monster problem under control yourself, you'd expel them all from the country. They are a group that has no respect for laws, custom, or tradition. Their greed and ambition drive them and they only care for coin and magic items.
You run your hand through your dark wavy locks and groan. The audacity of these people to hold AUCTIONS in your city and skirt your sales tax on the most valuable items! What do you pay your city guard for if they can't even stop an AUCTION?! An auction needs to be advertised. It needs a large gathering of people. It needs a physical location and a fixed time and place. How can it happen under your city watch's nose?! How?!
Incompetent buffoons and imbeciles. The world is chock full of them. Thank the Gods you have your brilliant and capable younger sister. Father never trusted her with any real work. Yet you gave her two months and she's already actually found one of these auctions before it's slated to happen.
"Excellent work, Maria," you praise your sister. Subjects always need praise when they do well. Everyone likes praise. "You will be rewarded for your efforts. A cut of the profits from this bust, I promise you." More than praise, however, they like material rewards.
"Thank you, big brother," Maria smiles brightly. Even after all these years, it warms your heart to see her smile. It was her greatest weapon against you growing up. She'd get in trouble with father and then she'd smile, apologize, and make everything better. It would disarm his anger in a way nothing else could and it worked just as well on you. You don't miss the way she crooned 'big brother' instead of addressing you by your name or title.
"But can you really stop it? The auction is rather soon, tonight in fact, and the Eluctable has formidable enforcers under his employ," Maria asks.
You scoff at her concerns. You don't consider yourself a vain man, but you are proud of your magic. Few men in the entire continent can boast of your level of skill at your age, and none could definitively call themselves better. You are a damn good mage. "Sister, have you forgotten the reason behind my long absence? I am a True Magus," you rise from your seat and push your magic out through your body to create a small but noticeable gust of wind, billowing your royal cape and pushing Maria's hair back. "I will take a handful of my honor guard, we will go under the cover of invisibility, and I will crush their operation like an insect beneath my boot."
Maria is unconvinced. She crosses her arms and her brown eyes narrow. She tilts her head ever so slightly and gives you the look. That look she used to give you as a child whenever she thought you were being foolish. "Is that wise, Alonso? You are the king. You can not risk your life in such a dangerous venture."
You sigh and roll your eyes, "You speak as if I don't have an heir, Maria. Besides, this is a task I am uniquely qualified for. My mind is made up." You stand up from your chair and walk from one end of the room to the other before circling back to retread your steps. "Let's see, I'll need to dip into my quartz dust. If I can take some of them down nonlethally, then I may be able to catch some of their higher ups so I'll need my scratch wool for stunning grasp..." you mutter to yourself as you pace back and forth across the room planning your next steps. Maria sighs and sinks down lower in her chair, resigned to watching you mutter and walk.
...
The sun has set on Alfida. The sky is dark and the moon is high overhead. You can see the faint glow of the city lanterns in the distance from your vantage point on the fourth story balcony of your royal keep. The cold night air is biting, but your heavy cloak keeps you warm. All your spell components are carefully concealed within the inner lining of your cloak for ease of access. You've hand selected five of your best household knights to accompany you, your bastard half-brother Luis among them. They are all dressed in similar cloaks hiding their mail armor and swords underneath.
"Your majesty, the men are prepared," your half-brother, Luis, states, his voice deep and strong.
You turn and face your men, looking each one in the eye as you address them. "Our mission requires the utmost discretion. The Eluctable's reach is wide and deep. I am going to cast invisibility and flight on all of us. Hold fast to the rope and cut it when we land. We will be landing on the roof and entering through the top floor. The auction will begin in an hour's time, so let's be quick about it," you explain.
Your men nod their heads, their expressions resolute. Everyone then wraps the rope around their waists making sure you can all stay together while flying and invisible. Once they're all secure, you reach into your pocket and retrieve your pouch of quartz dust. You whisper a magical chant and throw the powder high up into the air, letting the gentle breeze carry the fine particles across the air and over the balcony.
You can't see it, but you feel the particles fall down like a gentle snowfall. Next comes the actual hard part— performing the right motions to set up an invisibility cloak. "Stay still, men. The optical refraction coterminous needs perfect alignment," you spout some gibberish nonsense to make the process seem more scientific than it actually is. Plus, in your experience, the warrior types seem to be more comfortable when you shut their brain off with complicated sounding stuff.
The spell takes shape as you speak your chants and perform your hand motions. It feels like a sheet being stretched out over you, starting from your head and slowly cascading down. You can see the edges of the spell begin to spread. At first it's only the faintest hint, a small ripple, a blur, but it gradually begins to grow in size. Like a curtain slowly opening, the effect grows until it has consumed you and the men at your side. The curtain then shifts and warbles as it bends the light around it. It's not perfectly seamless, but it will do. You've seen worse. Plus, it's dark and you'll be flying. No one will see you.
"Alright, the spell is complete," you inform your men.
They nod their heads in affirmation and you take a moment to grab the rope before you cast the flying spell on each and everyone one of them. This one is less taxing on your magical energy and more of a simple manipulation. You only need to give them weightlessness while you actually do the real flying, pulling them along. Really, it's more like they're levitating while you're the only one actually flying. It still costs you a pretty penny in silver eagle feathers though.
The second the spell is complete, you pull yourself up, kicking off the ground and launching yourself into the air. The knights are pulled along with you, the rope tightening and keeping everyone bound together. They only scream a little bit. They'll get over it by the time you're outside the keep.
Flying is an exhilarating feeling. Your hair billows out behind you and your eyes water slightly in the wind, but you feel a special kind of freedom while in the air. You know that your men, who have never experienced the sensation of flying before, would likely disagree, but that's not for you to worry about. You have a mission.
You guide the group in a large arc that takes you high into the sky. Any imperfections in your invisibility cloak will be impossible to make out from this high up.
"Mmm. That map really is out of date. I should commission another and take the artist up here so he can work," you mutter to yourself. This bird's eye view of your city allows you to see every detail in the district delineations, the roads, and the buildings. You can see the entire layout of the city in way only a perfect map could convey.
You scan the city carefully, picking out the building that your sister marked on the map where the auction will be taking place. It's a nondescript wooden structure near the southern gate, that most troublesome of gates. People go to dump their trash there so it needs to be easily accessible and that creates vulnerabilities. Of course, when your father tried to seal them up, he nearly caused a riot. People would rather dump their trash in the ditches than travel an extra ten minutes or go through the annoying process of dealing with gate checks so the city started to reek and fill up with garbage.
Peasants... always so lazy.
You land gently on the roof and the aged and dry clay shingles groan under your weight. You can feel the old wood below your feet bending. Hopefully the damn thing holds. "Everyone, cut the rope," you order your men in a low whisper.
A flash of a sword later and the rope falls loose, pooling on the ground. You untie yourself and walk over to the edge of the roof and look down. Cloaked torch bearing figures slowly stream into the entrance to the building below. A man at the door stops each one and extracts the entrance fee, ten gold coins, before the guest walks inside.
"I don't see any guards on the street. Shouldn't there be some?" Luis asks.
"They pay off the guards," you reply. You pay your guards perfectly fine wages, but unless you want to beggar yourself, you can't pay them enough to outcompete the Eluctable's bribes. It's a constant balancing act, maintaining a level of security without bankrupting yourself.
"What will we do? Go through the front?" Luis asks.
You shake your head. "Patience, Don Luis," you reply as you fish a patch of bioluminescent moss and a finely cut ruby gem from your cloak. "We will enter from above. Take them by surprise."
The others nod and watch carefully as you take the bioluminescent moss and crush it between your fingers. You infuse the crushed moss with a touch of magic, causing it to glow much, MUCH brighter. You then focus that light through the enchanted ruby. It concentrates into a fine cutting laser beam and you use the gem as a handle as you carve a circle into the clay roof shingles. They slice cleanly forming a perfect circle cut out for you to slip down. Before it crashes down from the force of gravity, alerting them of your presence, you retrieve a sticky adhesive from your cloak and coat a glove with it. You then slap your palm down and get it nice and stuck before finishing up the cut allowing you to lift it up and gently set it aside.
"Allow me to go first, my liege," your older knight, Santiago, volunteers himself. He's up in age for a knight at almost fifty, but his skill is undeniable and so is his loyalty. He served your father for over thirty years. He's a little gray in the beard, but he's still a force to be reckoned with.
"Alright. Go ahead," you reply.
Santiago nods and carefully drops down onto the upper floor. You hear a creak followed by a soft thud. He catches one of the thugs guarding this place completely off guard and rams his sword through the man's throat before he can make a sound. He drags the body away and stashes it in the corner before waving his arm to signal the rest of you to drop down.
You go down last at your men's insistence. You drop down into the room and find it secured already. This building used to be a tavern before it fell into disuse. The second floor was the tavern owner's private living space and the room you dropped down into appears to be his bedroom. Only a few pieces of furniture are left, the rest having been sold off or stolen long ago. All that remains is a broken wardrobe not worth stealing and a rickety chair.
You can hear the auction below. There are several men speaking. One is clearly the auctioneer, but there is at least three others, probably bidders. The customers should scatter when you identify yourselves as the authorities. Adventurers are stupid and greedy, but they aren't so foolish as to fight the rightful authorities. Which is good because if they united against you... you'd probably have to flee.
No, all you really need to worry about are the Eluctable's enforcers present. You expect each one to be roughly on the level of your knights. With the element of surprise, you could take them all out yourself. But, it never hurts to be careful and Maria would've thrown a fit if you said you were going alone.
Luis opens the door and looks both ways. You see the faint ripple in the air that denotes his movement. He waves his hand and the five of you sneak forward, trying not to make too much noise on the wooden floors. There are a few thugs posted to stand guard but most of them are watching the crowd below, not expecting anyone to come from the top floor. You approach quietly as ghosts, swords drawn, ready to strike. As soon as you reach the precipice of the balcony overlooking the first floor, you burst into action.
"This is King Alonso de Alfida! In the name of the Gods and the king, surrender and you will not be harmed!" you announce loudly.
The adventurers below scatter before you're even done speaking and the room immediately explodes into violence as the Eluctable's enforcers attempt to abscond with their inventory and you move to stop them. You launch yourself like a missile at the auctioneer with lightning dancing along your forearm. He is not expecting a flying mage and he certainly doesn't expect the electric bolt you throw at him.
Your bolt slams into him, arcing up and down his body and filling the air with the pungent scent of ozone. His muscles lock up and his mouth twists open in a silent scream as the electricity courses through his body, seizing every muscle. You slam your boot into the side of his head, knocking him out and breaking his jaw.
He hits the ground with a heavy thud and a crack. Two enforcers are upon you in an instant. They each wield twin daggers and wear cloaks that seem to be woven out of shadow itself that work to conceal their attacks. You throw your arms up and squeeze a small iron disk between your palms hard enough to draw blood. A moment later, a bubble shaped shield of force bursts into existence around you and parries their attacks, knocking them off guard as their blades meet solid impenetrable resistance.
You take advantage of their brief disorientation to chant another quick spell, drawing forth the energy of the world around you. You pull on the power of the moon above, the wind blowing through the trees outside, and the water running through the aqueducts beneath the city and call forth a deluge of freezing cold water from your hands that instantly freezes into hard ice when it makes contact with their bodies. They scream and writhe in agony as the cold freezes the blood in their veins and the ice encases their limbs.
They try to break free, but they aren't able to shatter the ice holding their limbs in place. They, along with all the unfortunate souls behind them, are frozen to death within the minute.
"Cone of cold," you announce the spell name mostly to stroke your own ego, "Despair for you are facing a True Magus," you declare although you are sorely missing an audience. Your knights are mopping up the remnants of the thugs. You see Luis cut a man down with his blade and Santiago impale another on his sword. They have it under control.
You kneel down to check the auctioneer and find he's still breathing just as you hoped. The electricity was enough to stun him without killing him. All the goods are still here. Lots of coin too. You might've even made back all the money you spent on bribes to make this operation happen.
You tie up the auctioneer for 'questioning' later. He's coming back to the royal keep with you. Father had a dungeon built for troublemakers just like him. He'll tell you everything you want to know about the Eluctable... or else.
After he's secured, you then take stock of what's here. There is a small crate filled with the seven pointed chameleon hides that are supposed to allow the wearer to mask their appearance with those shadowy effects or get a serviceable camouflage. A few sacks filled with powdered Sakaz demon horn, an aphrodisiac so powerful it's banned. Oh, also it can be used for enchantment spells. That's the actual reason it's banned. Plenty of gold coins... a quiver of enchanted silver arrows which they probably stole the silver from you... oh! A magical ring. How exciting.
You reach out and pick it up from the table, admiring the craftsmanship. The band is gold and the jewel is a dark black tourmaline. How exotic. You think you'll keep this one. A quick check of the inventory listing reveals it to be a ring of protection of the lowest tier. Still, these are rare and valuable. You slip it onto your finger and feel... just a bit luckier. The fortune magic of the ring will make you a tad bit luckier in matters of life and death. Adventurers kill for these kinds of items. Literally.
You pocket the ring and leave the rest. You'll hand out some of the money to your knights to reward them for a job well done, the contraband will be disposed of (in your chest of other illegal items), and the pelts will be sold.
What a profitable and exciting day. Man, this really beats holding court.
____________________________________________
Acquired Ring of Protection +1. +1 in dueling rolls!
Acquired 1200 silver for your treasury. A net profit of 200 considering your bribes. This is after the portion you handed out to your sister and knights.
Gained 100 prestige for your hands on approach
____________________________________________