Chapter 6: Maliane (Part 2).

  ****

  Near Kalista, Month: 94, Year: 226.

  They left the others behind. Just Maliane and Selya, stepping lightly through the palace’s stone halls. No footsteps echoed. No guards questioned them. Disguises or not, they moved like ghosts.

  They followed turns, staircases, murals, until they reached the highest floor overlooking the central courtyard.

  The atmosphere changed.

  It was somehow… familiar.

  Light from the skies above the translucent ceiling, light from Auron.

  It spilled through a translucent dome high above, casting soft, icy rays that glinted off silverwork and marble. The entire chamber was oval and immense, columns spiraled with inlaid filigree, white banners hung like feathers, and at the center of it all stood a raised dais of woven stone and moss.

  And there, beneath the light, stood their target.

  The First Princess: Uquoia of Kalista.

  She did not smile and she barely spoke. Her posture was regal and unyielding, her expression serious. Crownlight shimmered faintly in her hair as her gaze passed over the attendants below, not seeing people, but placements. Roles. Tools.

  Maliane tensed.

  Even from three floors up, she could feel it: the gravity, the sharpness, the cold certainty. If the younger princess, the one who had hired them, was all veiled charm and calculated warmth, Uquoia was pure authority. A ruler who seemed to demand loyalty not through affection, but inevitability.

  Then Maliane looked across the courtyard.

  On the opposite side stood the one who had summoned them here.

  The Second Princess.

  Ashani of Kalista.

  She was radiant, laughing, waving to workers dressed in garments like their own. One hand rested gently on the shoulder of a younger Drakvari girl with dark hair and tiny wings, clearly the honored “new princess” of the ceremony.

  She was everything Uquoia wasn’t: magnetic, warm, effortlessly present. And that, more than anything, made Maliane’s stomach twist.

  “She’s too at ease,” Maliane murmured. “Smiling like she didn’t pay us to kill her sister today.”

  Selya didn’t answer. Her hand came to rest on Maliane’s shoulder instead.

  “Look.”

  Maliane followed her gaze.

  Princess Uquoia had begun to move.

  She stepped down from the courtyard toward the inner chambers. The crowd hushed. Attendants parted with precise deference. The dais cleared as if by ritual, as though something important and sacred was about to begin.

  Whatever was coming, the moment had arrived.

  Selya’s voice was calm but clipped. Ready.

  “It’s time,” she said. “Positions.”

  Maliane exhaled once, then turned without a word.

  The two of them descended the last stairwell.

  No one stopped them.

  In the maze of corridors behind the main hall, all they had to do was move like they belonged. Two silent Drakvari workers, heads bowed, arms steady, delivering a tray of refreshments to the First Princess’s private chamber, and there to assist her in freshening up and retouching her makeup before the main event. That was the story. And it was working.

  Selya knocked once, gentle and deliberate.

  A pause. Then a voice from within, clipped and bored:

  “Enter.”

  They did.

  Princess Uquoia sat at the far end of a pale, elongated chamber, facing away from the door, unaware that she was already surrounded by assassins. Her black wings were half-furled, the crimson patterns across them pulsing faintly.

  She didn’t look up as they entered. She was reading.

  Maliane gave a stiff bow. Selya spoke smoothly.

  “We bring the princess her evening tea.”

  “Set it down,” Uquoia replied, waving a hand without glancing their way. “And get me ready for the ceremony.”

  Maliane’s jaw relaxed slightly. She had memorized three simple phrases in Drakvari, rehearsed them until they sounded natural. But it seemed she wouldn’t need them. The First Princess was every bit as self-absorbed as the second princess had described.

  The final part of the plan was already unfolding.

  The poison: Purified Nexalan Root, tasteless, odorless, and fatal to Drakvari, had been carefully infused into the tea. For a Haksari, it would cause nothing more than a mild stomachache. The goal was simple: get her to drink enough, then be gone long before the symptoms began.

  Selya set the tray down on a small marble table. Maliane followed, bowing again before moving to apply perfume to the princess’s neck. Every gesture was well rehearsed and controlled. Her hands moved as if by routine, but her mind was sharp and calculating.

  Selya adjusted the teacup. Let it clink lightly, just enough to draw the princess’s attention.

  It worked.

  Uquoia turned, but didn’t look at them. Her gaze swept the table, indifferent to the servants behind it.

  “Drink first,” she said flatly.

  Exactly as the Second Princess had predicted.

  Selya nodded and lifted the first cup to her lips. She drank, no hesitation.

  Uquoia took the cup.

  Sipped once.

  Twice.

  They watched her fingers loosen slightly around the handle.

  It was working.

  Then, her hand stopped.

  Maliane saw it in slow motion: the princess’s gaze dropped to the side table, to the faint smear left where Selya had steadied herself. A ghostly white streak across the dark wood, powder, barely visible, but enough.

  Makeup.

  The silence thickened.

  Uquoia’s eyes lifted, suspicious now.

  And then she saw them clearly.

  Maliane felt the moment as if that instant was eternal. She saw the shift in Uquoia’s gaze, the twitch of a lip, the narrowing of her eyes.

  Maliane’s shoulder flared, the sunmark there igniting as she drew her blade and struck in the same breath. The steel sliced the air, close enough to shear a lock of silver hair from Uquoia’s neck, just shy of her throat.

  The target had moved just in time.

  “Haksari,” the princess shouted.

  “Turns out we′re going to have to do this the ugly way,” Maliane muttered, already preparing the next blow.

  Yet, before she could, instinct drove her back a step as something dark and terrible began to rise.

  Uquoia’s shadow writhed.

  It stretched, split, shifted, becoming things with limbs and jaws and coiling smoke, as the jewel at the center of her crown flared a deep, unnatural violet.

  Maliane didn’t need to understand the magic at play. She just knew that their enemy was extremely dangerous.

  But her own sunmark was already working.

  Sound bent. Warped. The air itself fractured noise, voices echoing wrong, footsteps coming from the ceiling or walls, the clatter of steel trailing behind where it should be. Anyone trying to pinpoint their position by sound would be thrown off.

  It wouldn’t last long.

  But maybe, just long enough to finish the job and then get out.

  From behind the curtain near the arched door, the room filled with smoke, not from fire, but magic from Solenya from the Sun Marks the assassins bared on their skin.

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  Figures surged forward through the haze. Assassins, cloaked in shifting shadows and distorted sound, burst toward their target.

  Selya moved first. She pulled a thin veil from under her sleeve and hurled it straight at the princess.

  A shadow intercepted it midair.

  Teeth, not physical, but formed of pure darkness, clamped down and shredded the veil before it touched skin.

  But Maliane smirked.

  That veil had been filled with vaporous poison. It didn’t need to touch her. Just linger enough in the air to make her movements clumsy.

  The princess moved fast, ducking behind a marble pillar and a drawer, her breathing already shortening as the haze thickened. Another assassin stepped through the smoke and raised her hand, a flare of orange lit her palm, and she hurled a firebolt across the chamber.

  It came within a whisper of striking Uquoia.

  But a shadowy claw, broad and jagged, snapped into view and blocked it, scattering embers across the tiles.

  Uquoia retaliated instantly.

  From behind the pillar, her voice rang out, something in the Drakvari language with authority. Shadows burst from the ground around her, lashing out in wide chaotic arcs. The marble cracked. Furniture splintered. Smoke twisted as fangs and limbs of living darkness tore through the air, searching for flesh.

  The assassins moved like wind. The erratic sound spell and the smoke kept their movements untraceable, footsteps echoed from the wrong direction, blades hissed like whispers from all sides.

  Still, Uquoia was holding her own.

  Maliane had to end this quickly.

  Two sunmarks on her back flared in tandem. In a blink, she slipped between the narrow space between the pillar and the overturned furniture Uquoia hid behind, low, fast, and deadly.

  They were face to face.

  Uquoia’s eyes widened, but too late.

  Maliane’s dagger plunged forward, aiming for the heart.

  The princess twisted, and the blade missed by a hand’s breadth, but still sliced deep between her ribs.

  No hesitation.

  Maliane struck again, this time aimlessly to whatever it could reach.

  Contact ripping the flesh in the angle of her wing.

  Poisoned steel met blood and bone. It should be enough.

  The rapid-acting toxin from the blade would finish the job, even if she hadn't drunk enough tea.

  Maliane withdrew, ducking behind cover as more shadowy tendrils exploded from Uquoia’s side. The princess was gasping now, retreating deeper into the veil of her own summoned nightmare.

  “It’s done! Fall back!” Maliane shouted.

  But then Maliane paused as she met eyes with her comrades.

  Two of her own had been caught. Drakvari warriors now had flooded the hall.

  She saw them, massive figures in plated armor, dragging one assassin by the arm, another pinned against the wall.

  They were too many.

  Maliane’s gut twisted.

  She couldn’t save them.

  Not without losing the rest.

  Maliane’s eyes met the captured assassins, one pleading, the other resigned. She hated this part. But there was no time.

  “Let’s go!” she shouted.

  The assassins scattered between smoke and mirages, boots slamming against polished stone as they sprinted down the wide corridor. Behind them, chains rattled and orders echoed in the Drakvari tongue. A burst of footsteps. Then a scream.

  One assassin was yanked backward by an armored hand, nearly lifted off the ground.

  The second was caught too, but her palm lit with sudden light. A sunmark flared across her shoulder, and with a pulse of invisible force, a shockwave burst outward, hurling the warrior off her. She hit the floor running, breath ragged, and vanished between smoke.

  But the other wasn’t so lucky.

  Despite every twist, every trick, the assassin’s magic fizzled against the iron chains. Her blade was knocked from her hand. A boot crushed her side. And just like that, she was at the mercy of the Drakvari.

  The remaining assassins pressed on, the corridor tilting downward toward the old storage halls. Just ahead, their salvation. The iron grate that led to the drainage tunnels.

  But just as the gate was in their view, hope in their eyes, something unexpected happened again.

  From the opposite end of the corridor, a hail of bladed weapons surged at them: knives, spears, short swords, moving too fast, too many of them to be thrown by hand. They twisted in the air like they had minds of their own.

  The assassins dove. Blades grazed flesh, cut sleeves, tore skin. One screamed, clutching her side, but they kept moving.

  Maliane turned toward the source.

  There, standing between two statues in the middle of a narrow corridor, her hair aglow with faint silver light, was their employer, Princess Ashani.

  Her expression was unreadable. No fury nor joy. Just control. Her arms hung calmly at her sides, but her wings wide open as she walked, the weapons floated around her, as if defending her and ready to attack, orbiting her shoulders, trembling like hunting dogs barely held in check.

  “You lying snake!” Maliane shouted.

  Ashani didn’t need to understand Haksari. The fury in Maliane’s voice said it all.

  Maliane lunged, only for her legs to collapse beneath her.

  A horrible pressure seized her throat.

  All around her, assassins fell to their knees, hands clawing at their necks, gasping. Something tightened around their windpipes: the necklaces. The expensive gifts. The golden chains now writhed like snakes, constricting their wearers with perfect, silent obedience.

  Maliane's blood turned cold.

  Her necklace hadn’t been around her neck, but she could feel it now, squirming like a living thing inside her pocket.

  She grabbed it and flung it away, letting it clatter across the floor like a cursed worm.

  How? How was Ashani doing this? She was Truthbound. A follower of Auron. A lie spoken under oath should have stripped her of her magic.

  Unless…

  Maliane’s eyes flicked sideways.

  Selya was gone.

  The truth hit like a dagger in the back.

  It wasn’t Ashani who lied.

  Selya lied.

  She had mistranslated the princess’s words. Twisted them. And Maliane had believed every one of them.

  “Traitor!” Maliane roared. “I swear this will come back to bite you!”

  Behind her, a warrior swung a length of chain like a whip, aiming for her head. Maliane dropped low, rolled between the massive legs of the Drakvari warrior, and slashed at the warrior’s calf. The blade bit deep, and she staggered back with a cry.

  Then came the chaos.

  Steel clanged. Orders were shouted. Maliane moved like if possessed, slipping through gaps, using her enemies’ size against them, letting them block each other’s sight. As she passed between two warriors, she cracked a glass vial at her hip.

  A haze of volatile poison burst into the air.

  Eyes burned. Breaths turned ragged. Several warriors gasped and coughed violently, clutching at their throats. One dropped her weapon, wheezing. Another stumbled into her comrade, vision clouded, movements clumsy. The sting in their lungs made commands falter, steps misjudge, swings miss.

  Maliane, immune to its worst effects after countless days of conditioning, darted through the cloud unharmed.

  She triggered another sunmark. Illusions bloomed: five, six versions of herself scattering into the mist.

  “It was Princess Ashani! She hired us!” she shouted, voice hoarse but clear.

  Nobody seemed to hear… or understand.

  Then pain bloomed in Maliane’s side, deep, sudden, burning.

  She spun.

  A jagged shadow had torn into her flank, leaving her gasping. Down the corridor, eyes blazing with fury and unchecked magic, stood Princess Uquoia. Blood streaked her tunic, her wings unfurled and glinting crimson in the flickering light. She hurled another strike, raw, violent, and wild.

  Maliane barely dodged. The blast ripped past her and slammed into a pair of Drakvari warriors instead. One screamed. The other went down.

  Uquoia didn’t flinch. She advanced through the chaos, magic crackling at her fingertips, striking at anything in her path. Friend or foe, it made no difference.

  “Persistent witch,” Maliane murmured grimly.

  She staggered, breath failing, the wound searing hot, but the cooldown was almost up. Just a few more seconds.

  She turned her back to the carnage and sprinted.

  Ahead, the coladera. The escape route.

  Almost there.

  Out of nowhere, a glint of metal.

  Pain burst in her shoulder as a knife slammed into her back, thrown by Ashani’s magic. She stumbled but didn’t stop.

  Now.

  She activated her two most trusted sunmarks; the two same sunmarks she had used before to deliver a strike on Princess Uquoia.

  One warped her body, compressing bone and muscle, allowing her to slip through impossibly narrow spaces.

  The other launched her forward, a blur of speed and momentum, faster than anyone could react to.

  The two marks ignited at once.

  And she vanished.

  A streak of shadow slipped through the grating. The iron bars shuddered as she forced herself through, limbs twisting, spine compressing, her breath a rasp in her throat. She hit the cold, slick stone of the drainage tunnel, and the current surged around her, nearly dragging her under.

  But then, suddenly, it was over.

  The water spilled her out into the ravine with a hollow splash.

  She lay there, sprawled among the ferns and moss, soaked to the bone and barely breathing. Every muscle trembled. Her vision blurred. The world spinned around her. Even her sweat had turned bitter.

  But she was alive.

  Free.

  Then she saw her.

  Selya.

  Already waiting by the edge of the stream, flanked by Drakvari warriors. They moved with calm, hoisting the gold-filled chest up from the ravine, just as planned.

  Selya’s plan.

  Maliane pushed herself upright with a grunt, her legs barely obeying. Blood ran warm down her side. Her voice cracked, but it came sharp and full of fury:

  "You lying, treacherous fiend!"

  Selya turned slowly.

  There was still surprise in her expression. Yet also a hollow pity, like someone looking at a dying animal too stubborn to lay still.

  “You are a freaking monster. Still breathing and walking after whatever happened in there.” Selya said with a smirk on her face.

  Then something shimmered.

  A glow flared across the back of Maliane’s left hand. A new sunmark, blooming into existence like fire godlight. The mark pulsed faintly, vibrant and clear: a gift from Solenya. Something that she would bestow her followers on rare occasions, to honor those who had accomplished extraordinary feats.

  Even Selya looked startled. For a breath, fear flickered in her eyes.

  Then Maliane struck.

  The dagger flashed toward her ribs, but Selya caught her wrist mid-swing. There was a sharp twist, a splash, and the blade tumbled from Maliane’s hand into the water below.

  She was too tired. Too slow.

  But not finished.

  With a desperate pivot, Maliane kicked forward, a hidden blade snapping from the toe of her boot, aimed low and fast.

  Selya stepped back just in time. She caught Maliane’s leg mid-kick and shoved her off balance, eyes narrowing. Only someone who had trained beside Maliane, could have seen that attack coming.

  And in Selya’s gaze, pitty with and regret.

  Her jaw clenched. She stepped closer, empty-handed but resolute. For just a moment, her fingers trembled.

  “That gift from Solenya came too late, my friend,” she said softly. “Our paths… part here.”

  She looked into Maliane’s eyes one more time. Her mouth moved as if she meant to say something more, but the words never came.

  Instead, she whispered, “I’m sorry it had to end this way.”

  And then, with a breath like a flinch, she drove the blade into her chest.

  The knife withdrew.

  Maliane lay there in the stream, gaze up towards the sky, blood weaving tendrils through the water like ink.

  Auron’s rings shone like molten crowns above her, beautiful and full of power.

  She drank in their light, burning it into memory.

  Like the rings of Auron that always circle back, she vowed she too would return. Return to find Selya, and take her vengeance, even if from beyond the grave.

  Commander Tewali of the Northern division,

  I regret to inform you that an almost fatal attempt was made on Princess Uquoia’s life during tonight’s ceremony. Though she survived, her condition remains unstable due to the effects of the poison.

  The attackers were Haksari. Our warriors were unable to secure any of them alive for questioning, though efforts continue to find any that may have escaped. Among the items recovered, we found jewelry bearing the sigil of Lord Creese. Given our history with the northern Haksari cities, the most reasonable conclusion is that this act was orchestrated in retaliation.

  Remain at your post, and keep your forces vigilant. Kalista must not appear weakened in this time of uncertainty.

  – Princess Ashani of Kalista

  Qilani's Campaign.

  Chapter 9: Sulaye.

  Thank you very much for taking the time to read my story.