Celestial Hymn 51 (Patreon)

Celestial Hymn

Chapter 51

-VB-

Alan Marris
The Mage Lord

After I saw the children and Stannis leave to their rooms to rest, I turned right back around and began to walk back to the kitchen where I had picked up the cooked vegetables.

The Westward Kitchen was a traditionally “low end” kitchen that specialized in less expensive ingredients. Because of this “common-ness,” most of the staff and servants working there were also smallfolk.

It was, in essence, one of the easier ways to get someone into the Red Keep without raising suspicions.

However, I also knew that this was too convenient. A second poisoning happening within the Red Keep when everyone knew we were hyper-vigilant?

Yeah, no.

I just needed one person alive who might be connected to the original poisoner.

This was why only fifteen minutes after I stopped Stannis from getting poisoned the staff of the Westward Kitchen found themselves sitting on their knees on the kitchen floor.

I stood before them with a drawn, regular sword - or as regular as they come when it was made by one of my acolytes - and waited.

When I finally saw more than a few of the staff start to get fidgety, I spoke up.

“Yesterday, Lord Stannis was nearly poisoned.”

They looked up in shock.

Except for two.

“And the poison was on the vegetable made by this kitchen.”

Horror showed up on all of the rest.

The other two…

The first bit her own tongue, only to be met by my Sorcery keeping her from biting her tongue clean through and making her choke on it. The second jumped and lunged at me with a purple fluid-dripping kitchen knife.

He froze mid-air as my Sorcery took hold of him and kept him frozen in his current motion.

I turned to the rest of the staff.

“It is a good thing that I am a sorcerer and not a regular lord, hmm? Otherwise, all of you would be dead ‘just in case.’ Go. I need to have a talk with these two.”

Chefs and servants alike ran out of the room, leaving me with the two would-be attackers.

I smiled at them.

“Who would like to speak and die and who would like to not speak and die a very slow, very agonizing… let’s call it life?” I said toward the end. “I’m going to keep the one who doesn’t speak in my dungeon, keep them alive at all cost. Hell, I’ll keep you healthy in mind and body so that you can experience everything I’ll do to you. Maybe I’ll take my time with sawing your dick or boobs off. I’ll let parasites dig around you. What is it like for animals to gnaw on your heart while you can’t be killed?” I hummed inquisitvely. “What is it like to be aware but not move for years? To see and hear only one sound for months? Can you drown forever?”

The longer I went on, the paler each of the attackers became and they both began to blurt out anything they could the moment I stopped talking.

I listened to them talk.

Varys.

Fucking Varys.

Oh, Varys didn’t contact them directly. He had his proxies use proxies, but who else used enough influence and money to proxies to assassinate people in King’s Landing? I had removed everyone else, after all. Varys made a mistake, though. He had his birdies check on the two assassins, and the assassins noticed the mute kids checking up on them discreetly.

When their stutters came to a silence as they said everything they could, I just nodded.

“Thank you.”

And then snapped their necks, delivering death just as I promised.

I dropped their bodies and left the room, only letting the guards outside, who stood trembling in their armored boots, to “please clean up the mess, thank you.”

I had a eunuch to find.

-VB-

Varys
The Schemer

Months of silence to keep himself out of the view of the readily distracted mage lord had … been in vain.

His attempt to end the line of the Baratheons, trueborn or not, only managed to bring the mage lord’s attention instead of the opposite. Varys had been so sure that the mage lord had not a single interest in the princess and the prince…

So the plan failed and if Lord Stannis’s continued presence among the living and the mage lord’s visit to the Westward Kitchen was of any indication, then his attempt to end the Great Council before it even began was also in vain.

However, let it not be said that he wasn’t without his own means and even more contingencies.

His birdies carried the small mugs of wildfyre into the mage lord’s office while Varys himself was overseeing the operation. There was no other way to see this through.

“So what’s the plan here?”

Varys came to a freeze while his birds looked horrified by someone behind him. He hadn’t even heard him enter. Was there anything magic could not do?

He turned around and came face to face with the smiling mage lord.

“Ah -.”

And then his world was spinning.

What?

Was he falling?

Then he felt pain as he hit the floor.

And saw his own body.

Oh. So that’s what happened. He’d been beheaded.

How … silly.

“I thought I was forgetting something,” the mage lord sneered, losing his smile. “And I forgot the most dangerous player of them all, didn’t I? You just stayed quite and didn’t do anything… and then fell right into my trap.”

As Varys felt the world slowly turn dark and cold, he looked up at the mage lord one final time as the mugs of wildfyre that were meant to be stored in hidden compartments simply vanished, flying out of the cups and dissipating like the mist themselves.

“Thank you for revealing yourself, you dickless cunt.”

Fuck you, too, mage lord.

And then the darkness claimed him for good.

-VB-

Perks earned this chapter: 20.40 Genetic Improvements (400 CP)

Why settle for what Mother Nature gave you? You have the knowledge to tweak and refine genetic code, including your own, bringing out hidden qualities and introducing new ones from other samples. You know how to build the technology needed for these sorts of feats, and have a basic grounding in the appropriate scientific areas.