“You could have done that before he hit me, you know,” Alarice growled darkly as Sascha helped her to her feet. “That hurt.”

“I’m so sorry! I was going to but then he turned around and I had to hide in the curtains!” Lysabel apologized profusely.

“It’s fine,” Alarice shrugged, a red mark spreading across her cheek. “The payoff was worth it.” She strode over to the ash pile and brushed her foot through the ash dispassionately.

“What the fuck just happened?” I gaped. “Seriously! What just happened?”

“You’d have known if you were paying attention,” Carrisyn lectured me. “This plan was agreed upon back in Silverbough.”

“I’m part of this shindig, too,” I pouted. “You could have clued me in.”

“Sometimes you simply have to enjoy the party if you aren’t going to pay attention to the planning,” Carrisyn pointed out.

“That’s some horse shit right there,” I raged. “I could have helped!”

“You will,” Carrisyn assured me. “The next part of this is going to take all of us and then some.”

“Do you have a clever plan like this one?” I glanced down at the ash and resisted the urge to kick it and spread it all over the place.

“Nope,” Carrisyn shook her head. “Killing King Ancil will not be nearly so simple, I’m afraid.”

“The trick will be to do it without having to start a civil war,” Sascha shook her head. “The royal guard won’t be so easy to intimidate. Especially once my brother’s fate is widely known.”

“I can bring the Ranger Corps,” Alarice offered. “Fight numbers with numbers.”

“I love you, my dear sister. So very much,” Sascha shook her head in exasperation. “But I did just mention I didn’t want to start a civil war.”

“I would like to rest a bit,” Carrisyn sagged, her fatigue obvious. “But I’m afraid we don’t have the luxury of time. By tomorrow morning Galen’s fate will be all the news and the king will be too well-protected to kill with anything less than a protracted, bloody civil war.”

“I’ll be honest,” Sascha scowled, retrieving the blade, and securing it to her belt, “I don’t relish the idea of facing father at night.”

“I don’t relish facing Ancil at any time,” Lysabel shuddered.

“Can you get us inside the castle?” Carrisyn turned to Alarice.

“No,” the ranger shook her head. “Those are royal guards and won’t recognize my authority. And we certainly can’t go waltzing in like we did here. Especially given you’re a wanted criminal.”

“Ah, yes,” Carrisyn massaged her brow. “I’d forgotten about that.”

“The sewers,” Zelaeryn rumbled.

“What?” Sascha turned to her. “There’s no sewer access from outside the castle.”

“The old sewers afford access,” Zelaeryn responded. “When we took the kingdom years ago, I gained access to the castle through the sewers outside the northern wall of the keep. It doesn’t connect to the castle sewers directly but brushes against them in multiple places. We can simply break down one of the walls and gain access that way.”

“I’ve never seen these sewers before,” Sascha sounded unsure.

“If you had, we wouldn’t be able to use them,” Zelaeryn pointed out. “Rest assured they exist. The tricky part will be traversing the entirety of the city without alerting any patrols.”

“Oh!” Sayuri raised her hand, hopping excitedly on one foot. “Oh! Oh!” She grunted again.

“Yes?” Carrisyn snapped in exasperation at the cat girl.

“Sayuri knows all the ways to move around without being seen!” Sayuri declared proudly.

“Can you lead us to the north wall of the keep without alerting anyone?” Zelaeryn asked. Sayuri nodded proudly.

“Sayuri is an expert in not being noticed!”

“Could have fooled me,” Carrisyn sighed, ignoring the withering look I shot her.

“It sounds stupidly dangerous,” Sascha shook her head.

“Stupendously unlikely to succeed,” Alarice said in agreement.

“A one-way trip to a final dance on the gallows at best,” Lysabel supplied.

“Just our cup of tea,” Carrisyn grinned. “Lead the way, Sayuri!”

“What the fuck is wrong with these people?” I whispered to myself and shook my head as I followed listlessly after them. Wandering through the sewers did not sound like a lot of fun to me. Whether royal crap or commoner crap it all stank the same. Just like this ‘plan’. Of course, I didn’t really have an alternative.

I glanced at my reflection in a mirror as we passed through the prince’s personal chambers and shuddered. I look like shit, I decided. My hair, once sleek and pale like spun silver was matted and bloody. My face was gaunter than I recalled it being and my clothes were tattered and basically useless. I’d found a Ferrari with Ashvallen’s body and turned it into a Pinto. I shook my head, my once carefully pony-tailed hair flopping listlessly about my shoulders and back. Fortunately, I’d lost the ability to smell myself or the rest of the party because I was 100% certain we stank like skunks humping a Durian fruit in a Roman toilet. On the plus side, I thought, at least the sewers couldn’t make us smell that much worse.

Sayuri led us along the outer curtain wall of the prince’s palatial estate and through a little-used gate onto a narrow wagon road leading back into the city. As early evening darkened to night and the sliver moon rose into the sky, we reached the outskirts of Arkbridge. Sayuri led us sharply right off the wagon road and along a series of narrow, winding alleys.

“We have to go around up here,” Sayuri scowled as she whispered to us. “There is a big dog in the yard that barks a lot and will chase us and bite us if we’re not careful.”

We shrugged and followed her as she wound west toward the river splitting Arkbridge in two before plunging back into more alleys and narrow paths between buildings barely more than a single person wide. Zelaeryn had to turn sideways multiple times to fit through the close confines. Finally we emerged from the maze of paths we’d taken and were faced with a towering wall of stone jutting skyward. Sayuri led us along the wall for nearly a kilometer before stopping short and grinning.

“We are here!” She proclaimed proudly, gesturing to a hastily built wooden covering laying on the ground. Most of the timbers had rotted away and a particularly putrid odor wafted up from beneath the rotted wood.

“She’s right,” Zelaeryn nodded in some small amount of awe. “This is it.”

“Oh,” I wrinkled my nose in disgust. “Goody.”

“Follow me closely,” Zelaeryn warned. “The sewers have been here since the founding of the city and have attracted many dangerous creatures.”

“Do you have a spell that can deaden my sense of smell?” I whispered to Carrisyn as Zelaeryn lifted aside the rotten wooden covering.

“That’s a waste of magic and I- “Carrisyn began before the stink wafted over to her. She gagged reflexively and shuddered. “Let me see what I can do.”

The crumbling stone walls of the old sewers looked ready to collapse at any moment as I dropped into the hole and splashed into a small stream of what I hoped was only water but knew better. While Carrisyn’s hastily cast spell had, indeed, deadened my sense of smell it couldn’t take away the reality of what I was standing in.

“So fucking grosssss,” I hissed, leaping out of the water and onto the raised side of the tunnel quickly.

“Humans have needs,” Zelaeryn shrugged.

“Yeah, yeah,” I shuddered, wanting to wipe off my legs but not wanting to touch them, either. “Let’s just set aside the fact we’re smack in the middle of a petri dish of typhoid, salmonella, cholera, and e. coli and focus on how fucking disgusting this is.”

“Well,” Zelaeryn shrugged. “On the plus side if we can’t kill Ancil Rhade with our weapons maybe the smell will do him in instead.”

“Not a plus side,” I insisted. “And not helpful.” I gingerly picked my way after Zelaeryn as she continued south along the tunnel. By the time Zelaeryn finally held up a hand to stop I was so lost and turned around there was absolutely no way I could have ever found my way back to the surface the way we’d gone. Each tunnel we turned into looked the same as every other tunnel with the same fetid stream of water running down the center. I imagined that during a heavy rain the tunnels would be a hellscape of repugnance the likes of which I had no interest in ever trying to picture.

We finally stopped at a relatively non-descript stretch of sewer and Zelaeryn put her long, pointed ears against the wall, tapping the wall with the hilt of her sword. She moved down the wall slowly, tapping occasionally until she seemed to find the right spot.

“If anyone’s on the other side they will not be pleased,” Zelaeryn grinned, a wild light in her eyes at the thought of destruction. I shook my head as I imagined the entirety of the royal guards crashing down on us as soon as the large blue demon ripped through the wall. If it happened it happened, I supposed. I took a few cautious steps back down the tunnel as Zelaeryn’s blade burst into flame, casting wildly dancing shadows through the section of tunnel we stood in.

“Are you sure we should just tear down half the wall?” Sascha asked nervously, obviously thinking the same thing as me.

“This is the sewers beneath the castle,” Zelaeryn explained again. “There shouldn’t be anyone down here and you can hear the water rushing by on the other side of the wall. No one will notice unless the wall crushes them. In which case they won’t be able to tell anyone anyway.”

“Wait!” I whispered harshly. “Water? Are we going to get flooded?” I had no interest in being washed through the tunnels and into the river or out to sea.

“It’s fine,” Zelaeryn sighed irritably. “The keep sewers are below the level of these. Can I get to work, now? Please?”

“Yeah, sure,” I stepped back even further just in case. “Do what you do.”

“Thank you,” The demon scowled and shook her head. With a grunt she swung her sword up and then down against the wall. For a brief second the crumbling stone held before exploding outward with a rumble. Stones tumbled down from the roof in a cloud of dust, momentarily obscuring Zelaeryn from view. A second later the form of the giant demon loomed from the dust, a grin on her face. “We’re through.”

I stepped forward, waving the dust away impotently with my hand and peered curiously through the hole Zelaeryn had created in the wall. Three meters below the hole a veritable river rushed through yet another tunnel. I glanced left and then right, the tunnel vanishing into darkness in both directions.

“We’re currently beneath the outer courtyard, if my guess is right,” Zelaeryn strapped the sword onto her back again and shook the dust from her hair. “There will be sewage access through the dungeons. I imagine the layout has changed somewhat since I was here last, so we’ll be depending on the princesses to direct us from there.”

“We’ll handle it,” Sascha nodded.

“Good to finally know where we’re going,” I quipped, smirking at Carrisyn.

“Just remember,” Carrisyn warned, shooting me an irritated look, “we’re locked in, now. No quarter will be given or taken. King Ancil hasn’t lived as long as he has by being merciful.”

“I’m well aware of how my father is,” Sascha muttered.

“You’ve never been on the receiving end,” Carrisyn pointed out. “You’re in the same boat we are, I’m afraid. My power is not nearly recovered, yet, but even if it were I couldn’t compete with the court mages. We will be outnumbered and outgunned. Do not hesitate to strike when an opening presents itself because they certainly won’t.”

“You are the worst motivational speaker ever,” I muttered, shaking my head. “Let’s get this shindig started, then.” I leapt from the hole Zelaeryn had created and into the wide, raging river in the dark tunnel below us.