Assaulting the palace was harder than Morgan imagined.

 

 

 

They had arrived late in the evening the next day. The revolution had kicked into high gear as they got to the capital. Aldelmo broke off to head to the University alone, while the rest of the group followed Morgan. Well, Rusty was in charge, but technically the ugly eight was Morgan's to command.

 

The guards were better armed and prepared than expected. The Eight tried to sneak in, but almost immediately were spotted. One of the eight went down when they got hit with a wind-guided ballista. Morgan cursed under his breath as he flared with holy light and healed the downed soldier.

 

There was no way the royal secret was going to remain a secret now.

 

Deciding that there was no point in trying to keep things quiet, he imbued the ugly eight and himself with holy blessing and holy armor. With a bold shout, "For Lyonesse and the King!" Morgan lept around the corner they had been hiding behind and led the charge. The eight were boggled by the prince's bold action, but followed him, nonetheless. As they rushed the gatehouse, it became apparent why Morgan had to lead the charge, "Shield Your Eyes!" The third prince cried out as he held up a large diamond. He focused his light magic through it blinding every guard that was unfortunate enough to be looking in Morgan's direction at the time.

 

When you have no plan or information, sometimes the best choice is to just bum rush the enemy and pray. It wasn't a bad plan, given the situation, and sometimes it is better to be lucky than good. The guards expected the ugly eight to keep their heads down because the standard defense was to rain a hail of arrows down upon anyone who dared attack the castle. The guards were not expecting to drop their bows and scream, "I'm BLIND!" While pressing the palms of their hands into their eye sockets.

 

Out of arrogance, the guards had not ordered the drawbridge raised. When the eight hit the ward, Morgan barreled into it head-first, granting the ugly eight access to the palace. There had been a scattering of arrows and a wide ballista shot, but nothing one might take as a threat.

 

Once inside the walls, the palace fell swiftly. The servants and most of the guards were uncomfortable with what was going on. Alas, they were loyal to the crown, and Arthur was the one wearing that crown. Normally they had to do what King Arthur commanded, but with Morgan bursting into the palace, leading the ugly eight while glowing with holy light, most of the palace staff was so baffled by this turn of events, they simply stepped out of Morgan's way.

 

Morgan bee-lined for the dungeons, swiftly subdued the few guards loyal to his brother, and freed all of the political prisoners. When the queen, the chancellor, the headmaster, and Prince Lance came out of the dungeon, Arthur's little insurrection was effectively over. With the palace secured, it took scant minutes to interrogate the few prisoners that had been taken among Arthur's loyalists. Discovering that Reed and Lilith were both being tried for Morgan's murder at the University, Morgan immediately left the palace with the ugly eight to go rescue him, trusting his mother and brother to finish securing the palace. He was in the process of rushing across the drawbridge just as a massive pillar of flame erupted into the sky.

 

 

If Morgan had to guess, he'd say it originated from the middle of the university.

 

---

 

Aldelmo was a mile outside the university when the sky lit up.

 

 

 

Aldelmo had been sticking to the shadows, making sure nobody saw him as he approached. The detonation dominated the horizon as a massive tower of flame shot up into the sky. He'd seen this before back when Baron Akar's home exploded, but this put the baron incident to shame. Immediately, he threw caution to the wind and charged at full sprint, using Reed's technique of running on a bubble of water to minimize friction.

 

The University gate guards had no idea what hit them.

 

He passed through the gatehouse like a storm. It was only because Morgan suggested that maybe not everyone was working for Arthur that Aldelmo left anyone alive. They were unlikely to be walking any time soon, but they would live. Aldelmo wasn't willing to waste much time on them. He assumed whatever happened, an explosion like what he just witnessed didn't necessarily mean that Reed was in trouble...

 

But it wasn't a good sign either.

 

Aldelmo rushed towards the flames. he was puzzled by how it appeared that there might have been more than one explosion. Closing in on the ring of burning/blasted buildings, he found in the center a smoking crater. Upon the far edge sat a dome of ice.

 

"Bingo!" Muttered Aldelmo, an expression he had picked up from hanging out with Reed. He sprinted for the ice dome and dug his fingers into it, prying open the dome to get to the hollow space inside. The dome had partially collapsed, but there was still an air pocket inside. It had clearly been created to protect the contents from the explosion.

 

Upon opening the ice dome, he found two people, barely alive, Charity and Monique, but Monique had reverted to her Monica form. She had a dagger in her hand and had been chipping away at the ice, trying to get out.

 

As the Dome broke open, Monica looked up, "Hey..." She whispered as she managed a weak smile, "What took..." She didn't finish. Instead, she fell forward as she lost consciousness.

 

Aldelmo pulled both free and moved them away from the chunks of burning fragments littering the area. Charity abruptly started coughing and struggling to wake up as Aldelmo laid her down next to Monica. She blinked a lot as she tried to focus on her rescuer, "Aldelmo?"

 

Aldelmo nodded, "Yeah. Prince Morgan came and got the eight. We turned around and came right back when he told us something was going on. Was he right? Was Prince Arthur behind all this?"

 

Charity coughed for a bit, then nodded. She looked quite reluctant to say anything else, "I... Al. I'm sorry."

 

"Sorry? Sorry for what?" He shook his head, "Never mind. Where's Reed?"

 

"I'm sorry."

 

Aldelmo felt a chill run down his spine, "Where's Reed?"

 

"He... The prince... He had one of Reed's weapons." Charity closed her eyes and turned away, "We didn't get here in time."

 

"WHERE. IS. REED?"

 

Tears started to roll down Charity's cheeks, "We were too slow."

 

Aldelmo grabbed her by the shoulders, "FOCUS. Where is he?"

 

"He was at the bottom of the crater! He could have saved himself but he didn't! He made that dome of ice over us when he saw Arthur firing Betty." Charity covered her eyes with her hand, "The explosion... I could see through the ice. It just... vaporized Prince Arthur. He didn't even have time to-"

 

Aldelmo shook her, "CHARITY!"

 

She stopped and stared at him.

 

"Did you see a body?"

 

Charity blinked, "What?"

 

"Reed always said, if you don't see a body, then your target isn't dead." Aldelmo took a deep breath to steady himself, "Did you see Reed's dead body?"

 

Charity shook her head, "Sort of? But it's impossible. Nobody-"

 

Aldelmo wasn't listening. He was already rushing to the crater. He surrounded himself with a layer of water as he slid down into the still-smoldering crater. He paused to toss back a mana potion before he started to check around, trying to detect water, ~The only water down here would have to be Reed.~

 

He started using high-pressure blasts of water on the loose debris that was at the bottom, both to cool it down and to blow it out of the way. The larger chunks, he just lifted and tossed aside. While he was digging, he heard voices coming from the edge of the crater.

 

A woman screamed.

 

Aldelmo looked up to see Lilith. She stood at the edge of the crater, alone. She looked down upon Aldelmo with intense grief. She was scanning around, looking for the best way to get down when Aldelmo called up, "Don't!"

 

She paused.

 

"You'll only get in the way!" Aldelmo returned to digging. Shortly, Lilith was joined by Charity who was helping Monica walk. All three looked down upon Aldelmo who was working alone, searching for Reed.

 

Monica eventually spoke, "Al... Maybe-"

 

"GOT'EM!"

 

The three women seemed shocked. Lilith in particular had to restrain herself to keep from jumping down to join Aldelmo. He had detected a sizable amount of water, which was just about the size of a person. He fell to his knees to scoop the dirt away with his hands as he muttered to himself, "Odd. It's a fairly large pocket. I wonder-"

 

A hand shot out of the dirt, grabbing Aldelmo by the wrist.

 

"SWEET MIRA!" Aldelmo grasped the hand in return and pulled with all his might, "HE'S ALIVE! HOLY SWEET-"

 

Aldelmo yanked a rather tall man out of the ground.

 

He had black hair with a touch of grey at the temples. It was cut short with a part on the side. His eyes were brown and he looked to be on the wrong side of old. He wore strange clothes that were all green, with odd patches here and there. Words of a language Aldelmo could not recognize were also on the man's shirt. It gave Aldelmo the impression that it was a military uniform of a sort, but of no kind he had ever seen before.

 

As Aldelmo pulled the man out of the ground, he abruptly took a deep breath. He blinked at Aldelmo in confusion, "Al? What are you doing here?"

 

Everyone was staring. Aldelmo frowned, "Who are you?" He turned back to the hole he just pulled the man out of, "Was Reed Demonslayer with you?"

 

The man looked puzzled, "Al? I'm right here. Are you-" The man reached forward, but he stopped when he saw his outstretched hand, "What... the?" He looked intently at both, turning them over and over as he examined them, "My old hands? How?" He suddenly started to look pale as his eyes unfocused, "Al? What's going... on?"

 

The man pitched forward into Aldelmo's arms as he lost consciousness. At that moment, the man disappeared, only to be replaced in an eye blink by Reed. Aldelmo caught his friend and held him in his arms. Aldelmo carefully examined Reed for injury and noticed that, except for being unconscious,

 

 

 

 

His friend was completely unharmed.