“Madam, please! For your safety—”

  Luitgarde Maryem was closer to 90 than 80.

  “Please do not touch the artif—”

  Luitgarde Maryem was mortal.

  “Please, madam, they're dangerous!”

  Luitgarde Maryem let all concerns fall to deaf ears as she continued her vigorous shaking of the glass box in her hands, while eight of Beuzaheim's elite hollow core guards watched in abject horror.

  Nothing happened, so she returned it to its pedestal.

  ‘Deal with it as you may’, that useless prick Baldur had said—and deal with it ‘as she may’, Luitgarde would. This was the fruit of her confrontation with him, and though it may be little compared to the full breadth of his schemes, it was a start.

  This vault had been abandoned for who knew how long, completely forgotten by the time her father had taken the position of chief, before Luitgarde had even been born—and it was most certainly not the source of all the expensive items Baldur had been passing around.

  On the flip side, this place should have been an incredible discovery, to be shouted from the rooftops, thanks to its historical value alone.

  Had Baldur cared, that was.

  The idiot had denied her request for experts to be sent in. If nothing else, they could have weighed in on his claims. Sealed as it had been, the vault was remarkably well preserved—to Luitgarde's untrained eye, at least—so there was potential, nonetheless.

  Or there would have been, if anyone whose talents lay beyond innkeeping and freestyle jousting had been allowed to take a look.

  No, it was just Luitgarde and far more guards than anyone could possibly need for a stroll through an ancient vault. She would have suspected Baldur sent them in to spy on her—paranoid prick that he was—were it not for the fact that they were simply too inane.

  Him hoping something did happen—with the guards too incompetent to do anything—was a likelier scenario. Hollow core guards would be no match for some ancient horror.

  But if they had anything other than inflated attributes to their name, they might have noticed the place was so manaless it almost hurt to be in, and Luitgarde was not even a mage!

  She took a step forward, examining another pedestal. Each seemed to contain a different trinket from some time in the past, though she could not read the remnants of the text some bore. Its script was unrecognizable.

  The display that made her opinion on the place flip was the one she found next. It was larger than her bed and caked in dust. Luitgarde almost summoned a cloth from her inventory to clean it, before she remembered there were people here she could annoy—if they wanted to avoid that, they should not have been Baldur’s men.

  “Clean this for me, please.”

  The guard who had stepped forward and started to wipe the dust off screamed, jumping back.

  Naturally, Luitgarde took that as her hint to see what the fuzz was all about. If it scared a guard, it was probably interesting.

  And interesting it was… just not good.

  It was a corpse. An honest-to-the-Devils corpse.

  That was around the point where she started considering just setting this place on fire. Baldur certainly would not care—though he might still use that as an excuse to complain, actually.

  Luitgarde wrinkled her nose. “I need a moment. Ensure I remain unbothered.”

  One of the guards was glancing at the others, almost one by one, then tried to meet her gaze as he spoke. “Madam, Heinrich and I will go secure the entrance while the rest continue protecting you. We will make sure no undesirables get anywhere near this vault.”

  Little did they know Luitgarde would not have lost a wink of sleep if robbers dismantled the place after she was done with it.

  Baldur deserved it.

  The vault probably deserved it too.

  Luitgarde scrunched her nose up in disgust again. Mere feet to the left, a partially mummified, partially skeletonized body lay in that pedestal behind glass.

  She had read enough books by otherworlders to understand what a mummy was, but it was not something that should exist here. Everything about it reeked of unnatural events.

  And many other pedestals were of that same size.

  What sort of freak has a hoard like this? Wave take this glass-obsessed maniac!

  And why was everything in glass boxes anyway? She could see the contents of most of them after a simple cleaning, so it did nothing for secrecy! And while her initial hope that ripping the glass from the pedestal would help had been squashed by the glass being a full cube, the fact remained that it took little effort to yank it free from the pedestal.

  Unless some additional function had been lost alongside the vault's mana, this all did nothing to deter would-be thieves. The glass could not possibly be making the objects that much heavier, either.

  A tracker of sorts? Lost to time, perhaps.

  Luitgarde reached for the glass of another pedestal—one far too small to contain a body, just to be safe. As with the others, she shook it, and to her surprise, the bottom snapped open, allowing a crystalline sphere to fall from it.

  She put the glass back in its place and knelt to grab the object. Its center mimicked the shape of a smaller, red circle, with orange and yellow streaks coursing through a blue expanse that bordered on purple. It was an uneven gradient, clouded in some spots, but undoubtedly stunning.

  Huh. Luitgarde had not expected a result when she tried to identify it.

  Could that have been what the glass was doing, keeping her from identifying the objects?

  Perhaps I should consider taking mementos of some of these. Luitgarde eyed the larger pedestal. Except for that thing, keep that thing away from me.

  At least the sphere would serve for such purposes. It was stunning enough, though Luitgarde had never considered how there might be a Devil of {Sunset}. Of course there was one—every Affinity out there had a Devil, just as they all had a Saint. Silly her.

  It seemed like an odd way to depict one, though—they were usually depicted as icons or objects that represented their power. This was quite the potent depiction, however, as it refused to go into her inventory. Her pocket would have to do.

  As she continued to shake the pedestals, she was disappointed to find nothing else seemed eager to escape its prison and fall into her hands. What a shame.

  Next up were some paintings on the walls, the least confusing part of the vault.

  At least those were not also behind glass seemingly unbreakable by human hands. Luitgarde poked the canvas as she examined its image. Quaint. But what in all the waves do not touch is this supposed to be?

  She was staring at one that showed a humanoid figure walking upside down while another seemed to chase it. Streaks of black and white paint were scattered all over the place. And that was the one painting she could make any sense of at all, with the rest being far too abstract for her.

  Luitgarde huffed. Though she appreciated the find, she had expected something more damning—beyond the fact that there was literally no real furniture or empty rooms in here, nowhere Baldur could have gotten those pieces from.

  “Madam, The Fire is mere hours away,” a guard said as he moved closer to her. “You are to return to the manor at once for your safety.”

  Luitgarde did not like his tone. She had not punched any guards in recent memory, but there was always room for additional enrichment on her schedule.

  Still, if she did, finding a way to ruin access to this place was the least she could do to keep anyone else from having to deal with the trauma of seeing those mummified abominations, and that might be difficult to do if she started a fight right now.

  Refusing to acknowledge the man, Luitgarde headed for the exit and started spewing random phrases she thought might be relevant to the matter, at once. “Pack it up, boys. You heard the man. The night waits for no one. Do not tarry!”

  She noticed them exchanging glances as they followed her outside, but kept looking forward. The mayor’s eccentric sister-in-law was to be treated as an unhinged but harmless creature, after all.

  “Oh, bully, we’re outside!” Luitgarde cheered once outdoors. “Look away for a moment, I need to relieve myself.”

  She walked into the deepest bushes she could find without waiting for an answer, shifted her form to that of a younger blond woman, and ran back to the entrance.

  They had locked up behind her, which suited her just fine. She suspected the place’s problems might stem from a lack of mana, and she would fix that before she left. Gripping the lock, she started to accrue [Toll] as quickly as she could, pushing ambient mana through her body and into the metal. The best part of growing old was how [Toll] capacity never stopped improving.

  Luitgarde could not help the smile that formed on her lips as lines started to light up on the door, the pattern growing more complex by the second. Her accrual of [Toll] ended abruptly, as the lock no longer accepted any mana.

  The lock and chains were now superfluous—even she could sense the place’s original defenses were back up. And most importantly, removing this lock would no longer be enough for Baldur and his men to return to the vault, though they would certainly try.

  Somewhere, a locksmith would be inconvenienced, but that was a fine price to pay for successfully starting shit. She tried not to giggle as she imagined Baldur questioning his men about what happened, only to learn they could not take any of the endless artifacts she had left relatively untouched.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  Luitgarde—in her usual, admittedly genuine form—returned to the guards through the bushes, muttering something about leaves. The carriage had not been left too far from this path, so it was mostly a matter of getting on and trying not to get crushed by how overcrowded it was.

  It did not help that one of the guards was eagerly telling another about how he had some bulbous swelling in his arm, and his wife was nagging him about how he should get it checked out, which he refused to do.

  Luitgarde’s suggestion that they acquire a scalpel and find out what was wrong was not well received.

  Only once she was alone in her chambers did she allow herself to cackle like a maniac, no doubt fueling a full batch of new rumors about her state of mind. It suited her just fine.

  As she went to rest for a few hours, Luitgarde could have sworn the crystallized sunset on her nightstand looked like it was glowing. She shrugged and closed her eyes.

  Luitgarde had always had an overactive imagination, after all.

  Enough was enough. Though aware he was being far more dramatic than he would normally allow himself to be, Theodosius refused to keep putting up with this.

  ‘This’ being his routine, in general. A considerable amount of his life itself, perhaps. No more would he waste away listening to his father’s inane ‘congratulations’.

  Unfortunately for him, his dramatic exit had been delayed. His legs were fully into the cramping stage of crouching in the corner, and though Theodosius’s Affinity would almost definitely hide the sound, he suppressed the urge to sigh in relief as it appeared the meeting was coming to an end.

  Had anyone other than Khaiman Kh?dan been at the helm, he might have risked trying to tip-toe the rest of the way to the greeting room, but the Saint of {Vanagloria} was impossibly sharp. Years of experience attending her lectures taught him nothing would escape her notice.

  A part of Theodosius feared she might have already noticed him, and was lying in wait to pounce on him the moment he least expected it. That was the irrational part of his mind speaking—the Foremost of the Saints would not actually hurt him, though she would certainly give him a scare.

  Unless, of course, she meant to let him sneak out. It would not be the first time it happened, either—the woman cared not for what he did when not under her direct supervision.

  As for why he was still hesitating?

  Honestly, the matter he had been overhearing was just about interesting enough to keep him from actually wishing to leave with haste.

  Khaiman’s blinks were slow as she met the gaze of the Saintess of {Lightning}, all the way from the throne she lounged in. Theodosius’s father had been offended by her choice of seat, once—when he returned from the confrontation, he never spoke out against the Foremost’s decorative preferences again.

  “Let us walk through this from the beginning, to ensure we are on the same page, Susanna,” Khaiman’s powder-white hair drifted idly, pushed away from her eyes by a breeze, or perhaps an unseen huff. “You summoned a Champion to some nowhere town named Beuzaheim. Seven other Saints, who are in your sphere, had already summoned Champions to Beuzaheim. All of them had their Champions die under unexplained circumstances. All of them failed to resurrect. And you knew this?”

  “Indeed, Lady Kh?dan. I was aware of what happened with Louis’s Champion and the others.”

  “And you still summoned a Champion with this Beuzaheim as destination?”

  “I did, my lady.”

  “Why?” Khaiman asked in a hiss. Though her eyes had gone wide, her lips remained curled in disgust. Theodosius did not pay it much mind—with the Foremost, it was hard to tell whether her reactions stemmed from genuine exasperation or mere annoyance at having to be involved in the conversation.

  “Beuzaheim is simply a prime choice as a starter area for Champions, Lady Kh?dan. The settlement is astoundingly civilized from what my sources tell me, and over nine tenths of the population are mortals. When our sphere first learned of it, everyone was baffled to see it was not yet absurdly popular.”

  Theodosius almost pitied Susanna—the younger Saint would not be getting any sponsorships for an additional summoning after a performance like this, he was sure. And worse—for her sphere, anyway—she was making her entire group appear as though they lacked common sense.

  Surely, they would have stopped after the second or third death otherwise.

  Khaiman’s sigh was long and made several curtains flutter. “Marcus, fetch me my war map.”

  An attendant slid out from behind one of the aforementioned curtains, curtsying before the Foremost. “The red one or the one with the holes?”

  The Foremost actually looked pensive for a moment, scratching her chin. “The red should do.”

  Marcus nodded and vanished in a puff of ashen motes. Mere seconds later, a dull but repetitive sound started coming from the shadows behind the room’s largest archway, and the attendant emerged from it, pushing a red table with a map tightly fitted to it.

  At first sight, it had the appearance of a standard—if perhaps oversized—table with a single pedestal, but with its smooth gliding across the floor, it soon became clear to Theodosius that the entire thing was propped up by a set of tiny wheels.

  Theodosius choked out a laugh, unable to keep it down.

  Marcus placed the map table between Khaiman’s throne and Susanna, then swiftly slid behind the curtain without another word.

  Khaiman descended from where she had been sitting in one sleek motion, as Susanna leaned over the map. The latter had an appreciative look about her.

  “Foremost, this is exquisite. If I may, where did you acquire such an intricate piece? Not once had I laid eyes upon a map so detailed!”

  While Theodosius wondered whether a high-quality map was really all it took for the {Lightning} Saintess to forget about her dead Champion, Khaiman would have looked positively gleeful had her grin not failed to reach her eyes. “You find it exquisite? I would agree—I drew it myself, after all.”

  “Marvelous! Forgive me, my lady, but I knew not that you were so skilled in the arts.”

  “I dabble, more like. It goes back to when I needed to find Lord Houston,” Khaiman sighed longingly. “None of the maps I owned were satisfactory, when he was hiding out in some obscure village. How I got the data is a tale for another day, but I was more than pleased with the results. I did not get lost—not even once!—on my way to take his head.”

  “Oh.”

  “Anyway, Susanna, about your Champion.”

  “Yes…” the Saintess of {Lightning} moved her finger gingerly, as if afraid to touch the intricate map. “This. Beuzaheim.”

  Theodosius’s hand had found its semi-permanent home over his mouth to prevent any future accidents.

  Khaiman had no such reserves about the table, pressing her hands against it as she lifted most of her body to lean closer to the point in the map. The table rolled slightly against Susanna, pushing the younger Saintess back and making her stumble. “Oh, that Beuzaheim.”

  Susanna, having barely recovered her balance, turned to the Foremost, surprised. “You know of it, my lady?”

  “Avoid it, probably,” Khaiman waved her off, pulling herself back and once again taking the table for a brief stroll. “The late Champion Saint conquered the fell lands next to it, but I have always believed his actions simply released the fiends into the wild. That is likely your answer—an end met by the hands of the soulless, that was what befell your Champions.”

  At that, Theodosius frowned—Khaiman spoke of the title as if knowing whoever she referred to was a given, but he had never heard it used before.

  Apparently, the (currently) failed teenage runaway was not the only one who got hung up on that mention, as another Saint raised his hand, making to move closer to where Susanna stood.

  The Foremost gaped back and forth between this second Saint and Susanna, almost looking expectantly at the latter.

  “That is Louis, my lady. One of the newest members of our sphere. Still, he encountered this… what I now know to be dreadful predicament before even I did.”

  “You. Which one of the Louis’s are you?”

  The Saint in question did not bat an eye. “The third to join, my lady.”

  Khaiman nodded absentmindedly before abruptly shifting her expression to one of bewilderment. “There are three of you already?”

  “Indeed, Foremost.”

  “Devildamned Lizan?ns. All offense meant.”

  The third Louis simply nodded.

  “Anyhow,” Khaiman continued with a roll of the tongue. “What say you?”

  Great, she is slipping again. Theodosius had been slightly surprised she hadn’t started speaking in any bizarre accents yet, but there he had it. The Foremost was peculiar in that way, though as far as he knew, it never truly impacted anything.

  Most of the Saints were several centuries old. That was not anywhere near long enough to develop that many quirks, especially not in an environment where so many people reached that age that most forms of language and cultural shifts were slow as tar.

  Khaiman, however, had been involved with the inner workings of the Principality for far longer. Perhaps longer than any of them have been alive.

  That was likely why she even knew to make such a hypothesis about Beuzaheim, in any case.

  “My lady, when you speak of the Champion Saint, who are you referring to?”

  “Ah. Indeed, you would not know him. He was ultimately nobody, dying an inglorious death, but his claim to fame was exactly what you would guess his title implies. Filth.”

  No one pressed the issue, simply nodding along. Khaiman insulting whoever the guy was—especially with such a tone—served as answer enough. It was probably not a matter to push into, especially with the Foremost right there.

  Similarly, no one appeared to know how to proceed. Khaiman started examining her nails, presumably uncaring about the silence, but the Saints and other guests were exchanging glances.

  “Are we dismissed, Lady Kh?dan?”

  “Oh. Yes. Dismissed, all.”

  She did not look up from her nails.

  To Theodosius, it was relief—anticlimactic as that conclusion had been for the meeting, even Saints of questionable intelligence would know better than to overstay their welcome around a potentially peeved Immortal, and they soon started filing out of the room at breakneck speeds.

  Standing was far less enjoyable—Theodosius got to experience an entirely different set of cramps, far more extensive than the previous one. Though he hadn’t needed to take the hood he now wore, he was grateful for it as he limped out of the room. Most of its enchantment’s effects could be replicated by his own Affinities, but he had felt multiple layers of protection would be necessary when he meant to run away for real this time.

  The cackling he heard behind him had him sighing—the Foremost had certainly noticed him, after all. Still, she made no move to stop him.

  Rather than immediately head for the loading area, he looped around the gardens for a few minutes. Not only did it soothe his aching muscle somewhat, but it let even more time pass. While his choice of escape route was uncreative, he had still prepared a few spells to leave a false trail, setting them off as he walked.

  Once he was done, he returned to where the merchants lingered, still far from done loading their merchandise. He stole the entirety of a large box’s contents—specifically, an unreasonable number of towels—and took their place, steeling his resolve for another batch of inevitable cramps.

  The lid slid shut, and darkness shrouded him.

  Alone with only his thoughts, Theodosius found himself unable to ignore himself. Was this really a good idea?

  His gripes might have been minor, but he had made up his mind by now. It was mostly a collection of many grievances over time, coalescing into a grudge that ran deeper than any issue with his schooling should have.

  As whiny as it sounded, Theodosius was tired of how unfair everything was. That feeling had flared up sometimes, even before. Especially whenever his father deigned to descend from his own high chair to speak of how, oh, he was so proud of Theodosius.

  His littlest son.

  Theodosius had few friends—somewhat unavoidable for someone of his status—but he had been around them enough to know something was up, even at an early age. The academy was quite a messy place, despite the Saints’ best efforts. His teachers all used different methods, but they still kept the parents up to date on the children’s progress—especially the prominent ones. It was, as Miss Walker would call it, the biyearly grade report that went to them. Around that time, kids got rewards.

  Special dinners or outings, gifts, anything, and they would gush about it the next time they were in the academy. Theodosius himself had a privileged life, he was not blind to that, but not once had his scores been cause for a special occasion. Not once had he seen a reward, even after years as a top performer.

  All Theodosius got was a pat in the back, and if he got lucky, a throwaway line like: ‘You are performing as expected, son. Excellent job!’

  No gifts. Nothing! He was aware he must have looked like a pouting toddler, but he had worked hard. Anything less than a perfect score was a failure in his books—simply not good enough.

  When he was indeed littler, it had been about making his father proud. Yes, it was expected. But how was it fair when others were rewarded for not doing anywhere near as well as he did?

  The breaking point had been the week prior, when the entire academy had organized a competition in which the students had to survive for as long as they would while hiding from a simulated monster. It was predictably an exercise in survival, but no specific strategies were mandated—anything was valid.

  Even hiding for the entire duration, and well enough that the Tree Veins grown man proctoring the test had a meltdown upon realizing he’d lost track of him.

  Theodosius had won! And by enough of a landslide that while his teachers were still recovering from the panic, he immediately went to tell his father.

  And what did he get?

  ‘Well done.’

  That was it! That was ALL!

  So what was he supposed to do? Keep taking it?

  No, absolutely not. Theodosius was leaving. Somewhere out there, he would be appreciated.

  Having riled himself right back up and in the opposite direction of any hesitation about this, it had taken Theodosius some time to notice the merchant wagon had indeed started moving. They were on their way out already.

  He smiled, if barely. This was it. He had taken the step. All he could do now was move forward.

  Beyond the darkness of his box, he could hear the merchants as they started speaking among themselves.

  “Is Tia still single?”

  Theodosius had a feeling that this would be quite the long trip.

  “Where are all these toiletries headed for, anyway? I’d never seen so many in stock.”

  “Oh, it was a special order. Something about renovations. Paul, where was this for again?”

  “Give me a moment to check.”

  “Right, right. Never heard of this place. Let me check the map.”

  “What is it?”

  “Eh, something is finicky. Apparently, it’s somewhere around the outskirts of Beuzaheim?”

  That was about the moment when Theodosius felt his soul leave his body.