‘This doesn’t make sense.’ Kamila thought while pressing the panic button on her uniform. ‘Why is Thrud targeting me? More importantly, how did she find me?’
Only when she noticed that one of the Awakened humans had brown skin and that they all spoke a foreign language did she understand that the Mad Queen wasn’t involved in the ambush.
After Lith’s little trip in Verendi had decimated its Awakened Council, those who had taken the place of the fallen representatives had looked for a way to establish their power and authority.
Verendi had been utterly humiliated and its elders massacred, an offense that could only be paid back in blood. The problem had been that no matter how much they searched, Elphyn Menadion seemed to have disappeared.
As for the Master’s Abominations, not only there was no clue about their position either, but also no one wanted to face them again. They had already inflicted the Council a crushing defeat on its own turf, there was no reason for things to go any different in the Kingdom, where the hybrids even had the home advantage.
The only possible target was Lith, whose position was well-known and his power not a threat to beings who had reached the apex of Awakening. Yet living under Salaark’s roof made any attack on his person a pointlessly complicated form of suicide.
The Verendi Council had given up on revenge, at least until the news of the birth of the Supreme Magus had spread past the Kingdom’s borders. The magical marvels that the Royals had showcased to their subjects were exactly what Verendi needed.
The power core of the DoLorean would allow the Council to make up for the death of so many of its members and to colonize Jiera while Garlen was still busy dealing with the Mad Queen.
Void Magic would give them an edge against true and fake mages alike so that even Jiera’s Council would have to bend the knee or die.
The only thing keeping that dream scenario from turning into reality was that capturing Lith alive was nigh-impossible. The Tiamat was a Divine Beast who could use Blade Spells, wielded Cursed Flames of unknown power, and had a mystical army at his beck and call.
The Golems and the mysterious Golden Knight made things even worse. To capture Verhen it would take a contingent so numerous that it would never escape the notice of the Garlen’s Council.
Also, no one of the new representatives wanted to face him. They had just risen to power and had no desire to put everything at risk on a maybe.
It was the reason they had targeted Kamila.
The human woman was harmless and was also Lith’s weak spot. The plan was to capture her and force Verhen to go back to Verendi, away from the protection of his allies.
There, the Council would have forced him to share his secrets or witness the woman he claimed to love die amid unspeakable agony. If the plan worked, Verendi would have restored its power and killed the Tiamat the moment he outlived his usefulness, achieving the perfect revenge.
If it failed, they would lose nothing. Apprentices were more than enough to deal with humans and even if they died, the representatives could always make more.
Finding Kamila had been the only hard part of the plan. The army kept the whereabouts of its members strictly confidential and there was no way to know which Constable would be assigned to a specific mission.
The Awakened from Verendi had chased ghosts for weeks until gossip had betrayed the position of the Lady Magus.
Orbaf the Treant was a wooden giant whose treetop brushed against the ceiling and whose arms were so long that he didn’t need to move from the Warp Steps to grab at Kamila.
Corporal Assa put himself in front of her, but the Fae swatted him away with a flick of his wrist. The members of the Knight’s Guard wore the best Featherwalker armors that the Royal Forgemasters could craft, but the Awakened’s equipment was made of Adamant as well.
The power of their enchantments was equally matched, making the mass of the contestants a deciding factor. Even the humans were actually shapeshifted Emperor Beasts who shapeshifted into their hybrid form to quickly dispose of the soldiers.
“Come here, sweetheart. I promise that I won’t harm you unless you force me to.” Pilmo the Mikuna, an evolved dragonfly, extended her chitinous hand, grabbing Kamila’s shoulder.
Her training had allowed Kamila to resist the fear that the sight of an oversized insect instilled into her and to sidestep the attack with footwork. Yet the composite eyes of the Mikuna followed her every movement as if she was simply stepping back.
Kamila screamed for help while Pilmo screamed in pain as a white flame erupted from the Voidfeather armor. The Guardian-crafted artifact bore Salaark’s enchantments and was programmed to kill.
The Mikuna used darkness fusion to smother the flames and suppress the pain, but they devoured her mana and became stronger for it.
With her enemy off guard from the surprise, Kamila jabbed with her left at Pilmo’s chin before landing a right cross in her disgustingly big eye. The armor also boosted her physical prowess as if Kamila was under the effect of a top-grade body-enhancing potion.
The jaw emitted a squishy sound as it broke while the fist pierced through the Adamant layer covering the eye with a wet pop.
Meanwhile, in the Duke’s study, Jirni and the rest of the members of the Knight’s Guard received the alert.
“Drop everything you are doing and grab onto me.” She quickly inputted the one-time use code that allowed her to override the Kingdom’s air sealing arrays in her Featherwalker armor and took Skywarp out of her dimensional amulet.
The glaive Blinked them in the green room where she hoped Kamila would still be.
“Fuck!” Both sides said in unison when they realized the mess that their respective allegedly simple mission had just become.
‘Something is wrong!’ Pilmo said to her teammates via a mind link. ‘I’m wearing enchanted armor, yet the human is wounding me like it’s paper.’
‘Let me take care of it.’ Orbaf replied, hitting all the newcomers at once by expanding his massive fist to its full size before stepping toward Kamila.
Jirni tried to dodge, but with the Guards still weighing her down, she took the blow square on her chest like the rest of them. Awakened needed but a thought to use fusion magic whereas humans needed time to drink potions.
Even if they did have the time for it, the body refinement of a bright blue core made their movements a blur for the human eye.
Kamila was easily caught and this time the white flames were just a sting for the massive frame of the Treant.
“Stay still or I’ll have to break your bones until you do.” Orbaf said while squeezing the air out of her lungs with the strength of his grip.
‘These bastards want to take me alive. I can work with that.’ Kamila shapeshifted the Voidfeather armor into its true form which resembled Lith’s Voidfeather Dragon but covered in plumes instead of scales.
Razor-sharp wings erupted from her back, cutting through the Treant’s wooden fingers and armor, turning his hand into a stump.
