Chapter 23: Intruders (2)
To the ragged crew of cloaked intruders, the D’Claire estate was little more than a shell.
A crumbling noble’s manor, too proud to collapse outright but too poor to hire guards.
A soft target wrapped in ivy and stormclouds.
To them, this was easy money.
A routine job. In-and-out, snatch the prettiest nobles, rattle some cutlery for effect, and ride off before anyone sober in town even realized they were gone.
They expected silk sheets, frightened women, and maybe a bottle or two of dusty wine to toast their genius.
What they actually walked into… was an extremely localized apocalypse.
First off, there was Vaelira, elegant, refined, well-read… and currently three-quarters of the way through Mana Enfusement on Carbonised Steel, a book she considered "light evening reading.”
Her idea of a romantic getaway involved blacksmithing and parrying drills.
She had memorized the page numbers for every known tendon in the human body.
Her ideal man was a sword.
The intruders would be lucky if she used one.
Then came Terrin and Sir Richardson, retired soldiers, in the same way a bear hibernating is retired from hunting.
Terrin still slept with a shovel under his bed and referred to it as “her.”
Richardson looked like a kindly old butler until you noticed that his boots were polished to parade standard and that his pen wasn't exactly what it seemed.
One man brewed tea strong enough to sterilize wounds.
The other used grave-digging as cardio.
Thalia, for her part, was the only one asleep.
That is, if you define “asleep” as “waiting patiently to be awakened by the slightest vibration so she can gut someone with the silver hairpin resting three inches from her right hand.”
One doesn’t simply become such a high ranking employee for the Everwinds without having particular ‘quirks’.
She liked wild meat.
Not just eating it, tracking it, skinning it, cooking it over firewood she chopped herself. In her own words: “Prey tastes better when it dies tired.”
And then, oh then, there was Lucien.
Lucien, who had been slapped metaphorically, politically, and physically from dawn to dusk.
Who had nearly been thrown out of the estate twice today, negotiated with people he didn’t know were corporate warlords, and learned the price of almond tarts in social humiliation.
He was bruised, exhausted, emotionally overcooked… and in desperate need of something, anything, to hit.
And there were no video games in this world.
You see, Lucien wasn’t a trained soldier.
He wasn’t a swordsman, or a rogue, or a ranger.
What he was… was a very tired man with nothing left to lose and an imagination that had spent way too long fantasizing about
vengeance.
Most of it disturbingly being about stabbing a certain someone.
And that, dear reader, is often more dangerous than a sword.
So yes, on paper, the D’Claire estate was a fragile husk on a rainy hill.
But what the intruders failed to realize… was that the shell they were poking?
Housed five wildly unstable life forms, currently in various stages of annoyed, rested, armed, or bored.
The meat they came looking for?
Might just be them.
***
The first row of intruders slithered through the estate grounds like shadows with knives.
They moved with the grace of practiced predators, faces covered, boots muffled with fabric, every step calculated not to snap a twig or stir a pebble.
One vaulted over the outer gate with a catlike roll.
Another flipped up into a tree branch with a fluid twirl, perching silently like some jungle wraith.
They were silent.
Efficient.
Precise.
Ninjas.
At least, that's what they thought.
They made it to the orchid garden, a field of delicate white blooms dancing faintly in the breeze.
The storm had paused, temporarily, like nature itself was holding its breath.
One intruder raised a hand signal.
The group split formation, slipping between the flowers like ghosts, blades drawn.
And then came the sound.
A low hum.
A faint ping.
Followed by-
BONK.
The man at the rear twitched.
His head snapped forward with a loud clang of reverberating steel.
He dropped like a sack of bricks, face-first into the orchids.
The others whipped around, but there was nothing.
No attacker in sight.
No sound.
Just the rustling of petals where a body now lay.
“…Egan?”
Someone whispered.
BONK.
Another fell.
“…Shit.”
“Fan out!” barked one of them.
“Find whoe-”
BONK.
The third one crumpled mid-sentence.
The others were done whispering now.
“RUN!”
Boots pounded through the flowers, trampling the delicate white blooms as panic overtook precision.
The orchid garden that had seemed like an easy checkpoint was now a maze of blind spots and dread.
The remaining intruders tried to escape, pushing through the hedges, vaulting fences, sprinting wildly, until they skidded to a halt.
A figure stood at the mouth of the path ahead.
Rain dripped off a weather-beaten cloak.
A broad-brimmed hat sat low over tired eyes.
A battered lantern swayed at his hip.
And in his hands, gripped like a knight’s longsword, was a spade.
Not just any spade.
A polished, reinforced, slightly-too-sharp shovel.
“Evenin’,” said Terrin, his voice as dry as the air wasn’t.
“You boys out for a walk, or just real passionate about flowers?”
One of the intruders snarled, trying to rally their courage.
“Outta the way, old man. Or you’ll be fertilizing those orchids.”
Terrin looked down at the garden behind them, then back at the men, unimpressed.
“You trampled the orchids,” he muttered. “Lucien is gonna be furious. Could’ve at least stepped in the dirt. Like civilized criminals.”
Another raised his blade.
“We said, get lost.”
Terrin squinted at them.
His grip on the shovel didn’t tighten, it didn’t have to.
“Listen, I’ve buried thirty-five men with this shovel.”
“…What?”
“Thirty-six if you count the one who tripped into it. Wasn't technically my fault.”
A long pause. The rain began to pick up again.
One of the younger thugs swallowed nervously.
“You’re bluffing.”
Terrin took a step forward.
His boot sloshed in a puddle.
SHIIING.
The lantern swayed, casting a gleam across the polished metal of the shovel.
Raindrops raced down its edge.
He tilted his head.
“You really think I came out in a thunderstorm, in slippers, to bluff?”
They hesitated.
“You lot were gonna hurt people,” he added, casually.
“Guess it didn’t occur to you that some of us might be harder to bag than we look.”
Terrin gave a humorless half-grin.
“You brought swords to a shovel fight.”
And with that, he charged.
***
Terrin dragged the limp bodies by their ankles through the mud, muttering all the while.
The eight unconscious intruders left crooked trails behind them, heads bobbing with every bump and rock.
“Richardson was right again,” Terrin grunted, hoisting one over the step into his cabin.
“Just like that elf ambush back in Redbrush. I laughed back then too. Next thing I knew, I was getting arrows removed from places that
don’t deserve arrows.”
He thudded the second intruder onto the floor, tying them up with a length of rope that smelled faintly of pig feed.
“Old dog sniffs trouble like it’s dinner,” he muttered.
“Should’ve brought out the heavier shovel.”
Rain clattered against the windows as he knotted the last cord.
In the distance, lightning cracked, and far off through the trees, another group of dark-cloaked figures slipped through the
perimeter, unseen.
The Crow, leading the second wave, paused only briefly to glance at the muddy trail near the gardener’s cabin.
The door was closed.
The grass looked… tussled.
But no screaming.
No guards.
No lanterns.
“Area’s cleared,” one of his men whispered.
The Crow sneered.
“Then the gardener’s gone. Or gutless. Either way, we’re on schedule.”
They pressed on through the rain, unaware that the gardener was inside, sipping lukewarm tea, sitting on a pile of their friends who
were now gagged and tied like trussed hens.
By the time they reached the outer halls of the D’Claire estate, the group split up.
“Fan out,” the Crow hissed.
“Sweep from multiple angles. Four of you, north wing. Window entry. Quiet.”
He pointed to the largest shadow in the group.
“You six, south wing. Check the main office and any servants’ quarters. If you find anyone asleep, gag and bag ‘em. I’ll take two to
check the master’s study.”
***
Team A – North Wing – Target: Vaelira’s Room
The four cloaked figures pressed through the side corridor with measured steps, hugging the walls, whispering curses under their
breath about soggy boots and sleeping nobles.
“I smell a woman.”
One of them announced.
“Stop acting like a damn dog, clear the area properly.”
Another snickers back.
“She’s probably dozing off with ten pillows and a lapdog,” one whispered.
Another chuckled.
“Easy gold and easier women.”
They slid up to the door, quiet as shadows.
Peeking inside, they saw a young noblewoman sitting on the edge of her bed, nose deep in a thick, ancient-looking book.
“She’s reading?” One scoffed.
“Even better.”
They slid the door open in silence, stepping in, expecting silk sheets and soft screams.
Instead, they heard a low hum.
And saw a sword floating mid-air.
Vaelira turned a page without looking at them.
Team B – South Wing – Target: Sir Richardson
The Crow’s boots made no sound as he moved up the steps, flanked by two men he trusted more than the rest.
They reached the heavy double doors leading to Sir Richardson’s study.
“Locked.”
The lockpick was already at work when, click.
The door opened.
No creak.
No rush of air.
It opened because someone opened it.
And standing in the frame was Sir Richardson.
Not in robes.
Not in bedclothes.
But fully dressed in his formal uniform, tailored black, silver trim, tie pinned, shoes polished like mirrors.
He looked like he had just returned from a military tribunal.
In one hand, he held an ivory-handled pen, idly turning it between his fingers.
His eyes, half-lidded and unreadable, regarded the intruders as if they were misplaced paperwork.
“Can I help you gentlemen?”
The two beside the Crow shifted uneasily.
Richardson didn’t blink.
“Did no one teach you to knock?”
Team C – Groundsweep – Targeting Lucien & Thalia
The last group stalked through the estate grounds, ducking under balconies and slipping past flower beds.
They separated, one heading west toward a faintly glowing door, Lucien’s.
As the intruder approached, his steps slowed.
“What the hell is that?” he muttered.
A strange pressure pushed against his chest, not magic exactly, but something.
The door itself radiated a choking hostility, like the air just outside a slaughterhouse.
Another crept up beside him, wrinkling his nose.
“Feels like this room wants to kill me.”
“Stop being a baby,” said the third.
They slowly opened the door, blades drawn-
While on the other side of the floor, back near Thalia’s door, the remaining creepers whispered:
“Act fast, You know-”
They opened the door, stepping quietly into the candlelit room.
Thalia, already awake, stared at them like they were very confused ducks.
She yawned once, rolled her neck, then reached beside the bed and pulled out her silver pin.
The men laughed.
“Whatcha gonna do with that, princess?”
“...Gut and grill a pig, usually,” she replied.
***
