The Soul Engine Ch. 11 (Original Fantasy) (Patreon)

A/N: Back for Week Three! In which things start to heat up a little~

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Avina’s plan had turned out to be surprisingly actionable. In fact, it was actionable enough that Mikael had decided to go ahead with it despite Thayla’s objections. But then to be fair, those objections weren’t coming from a place of knightly or martial experience. No, they were very clearly coming from a place of emotion and even obsession.

Put simply, they needed a way to get up close and personal with Zadicus. A moment when he would have his guard down and as few guards with him as possible. Unfortunately, that was going to be easier said than done because of everything that had taken place up until now. With Mikael being ‘misplaced’ at the same time that Tak and his thugs were killed and Avina was in the wind, Zadicus was sure to be on high alert.

While Avina continued to swear that the Lord of the City shouldn’t be able to connect Mikael’s disappearance to her, there was still no denying that he would have lost a summoned hero’s corpse, and the memories of war locked away inside of it, at the same time that his resident pet artificer had gone in the wind. Two blows that would leave Zadicus on edge… but not feeling vulnerable. Not yet.

That was a problem, because they needed him to feel vulnerable. They needed Zadicus Quinn to be desperate. Avina’s overarching plan hinged on it.

See, according to the Soul Mechanic, Zadicus had a pretty small playbook at the end of the day. He didn’t trend to stray from his old favorites. When the going got tough, he defaulted back onto what he knew best. Well, a few years back right after the bastard was made Lord of the City, dissent and discontent within Alether had been at an all time high.

This wasn’t entirely because of the old City Lord being deposed or anything like that. The man that Zadicus had taken the position from wasn’t THAT beloved, though his programs HAD made him pretty well-liked by Alether’s nobility. All minor nobles who had to exist on the fringes of the Kingdom of Ocreatha in a border city like Alether, they had still lived somewhat comfortable, getting kickbacks from the City Lord’s silver mine and helping to keep peace within the city.

And then the silver mines had dried up and the old Lord of the City had fallen for Zadicus’ gambit to turn towards his arenas. And then suddenly, Zadicus Quinn was the Lord of Alether with the backing of Ocreatha’s Council of Lords. Needless to say, none of the nobles who called Alether home were ON the Kingdom’s Council of Lords. They weren’t important enough for that. And ultimately… it had upset them that not only were they no longer getting kickbacks from the old Lord’s silver mines, but they also suddenly had to obey this young upstart who had been placed over them all.

Zadicus’ initial rule as Lord of Alether had been off to a relatively rocky start as a result… until finally, he’d come up with a fantastic idea. Fantastic for everyone but him, anyways. He’d announced a Grand Melee, to take place in a swiftly constructed Colosseum that put all of his other arena pits to shame in both size and grandeur. It was a huge event, according to Avina. It was effectively made up of volunteers who wanted to try their luck… and criminals rounded up by the City Guard.

It just so happened that some of those criminals were Zadicus’ greatest detractors among the nobility. And none of them made it out of the Colosseum alive that day. As a result, the backs of the city’s noble houses, all minor in the grander scheme of things but major in Alether itself, had been broken that day. And the event had been so successful that Zadicus’ rule over the city had been cemented ever since.

However, there hadn’t been another Grand Melee in the years that followed. It made sense. According to Avina, the city had been relatively quiet and while some events had still taken place in the Colosseum, which had been renamed to the ‘Grand Colosseum’ soon after, there had been none quite as big at that first Grand Melee. Certainly none that had been capped off with Zadicus personally handing over a rather large amount of gold to the winner, like had happened in the Melee.

And so… that was what they were aiming for. Avina was convinced that Zadicus would revert to form if he felt threatened enough. If they could just make him desperate by loosening his hold on Alether, then he would feel the need to tighten it back up again, likely by holding a second Grand Melee after the success of the first.

An added benefit was that it would distract the Lord of Alether from the manhunt for Avina, which would be well underway by this point.

Still, that brought them to the crux of the matter… they had an end goal, but how were they supposed to reach it? The most obvious way of hitting Zadicus Quinn where it hurt would seem to be going after his arenas. But no, that wasn’t the right answer. The only way to damage the arenas would be to free the criminals being used as entertainment. And while some of those criminals might have been innocent, plenty more likely weren’t. Mikael didn’t want to have to figure out who was who.

Fortunately, there was an alternative. Even with his strange hold over Alether, even with his abuse of the Hero Summoning Ritual, Zadicus had reached a limit for how many arenas he could open in the city before running into diminishing returns. But the man was as greedy as they came, and too ambitious to stop just because he already had it all. He wanted more. His greed would be his downfall if Mikael had anything to say about it.

Having completely taken control of Alether in every conceivable way, Zadicus Quinn had started looking outwards for new methods of expansion. He’d began making friends in far places, specifically by offering foreign merchants guaranteed protection in warehouses that he owned. According to Avina, it was a full-blown protection racket.

The warehouses that Zadicus provided to the merchants who came through Alether, either on their way deeper into the Kingdom of Ocreatha or on their way out towards the Zuverian Empire, were entirely safe. They did what the Lord of the City said they did, which was to provide a safe place for merchant goods while they were staying in his city.

The rest of the warehouses, however… not so much. Ever since Zadicus had gotten into the storage business, his competition had begun seeing quite a lot of issues. Constant break-ins. Warehouse fires. Broken goods, theft. And if you were a merchant foolish enough to try to leave your goods outside of the city… well, there were apparently bandits in the woods. Never mind that those bandits looked an awful lot like the City Guard according to Avina.

Put simply, Zadicus Quinn was making a bunch of gold off of his arenas. But he was starting to make just as much gold off of his warehouses. And if their end goal was to make Zadicus desperate enough to revert to old successes, to make him return to his roots… then what better way than to both figuratively and literally set fire to his newest venture?

That was why Mikael found himself standing outside of one of the City Lord’s warehouses, eyeballing it carefully from across the street. He was effectively casing the place, trying to figure out how viable getting inside was going to be.

He was also alone. This was where Thayla’s objections had come into play. See, Avina’s plan called for all three of them to split up, something that the Dame did not like one bit. Mikael, meanwhile, had found himself struck by the odd thought that ‘you never split the party’ when Avina had first brought the idea up. But he couldn’t say where the thought had come from. Whether it was a native memory… or a foreign one.

All the same, Avina’s reasoning made perfect sense and he’d found himself in agreement with her, despite Thayla’s protests. See, Avina had to lay low. She also had a contact she needed to get in touch with, a lead that she was staying mum about until it either panned out or didn’t. Thayla on the other hand needed to do the opposite of laying low. She had to stay active, moving around the city and continuing her ‘investigation’ while doing what ‘knights do’ in order to keep up appearances.

If the Knight of the Rose suddenly went underground and stopped showing up where Zadicus expected her to show up, there would be suspicions raised across the board. Likewise, if she was caught helping some random fucker burn down one of Zadicus’ warehouses, she would suddenly be as hunted as Avina currently was, and that wouldn’t do.

Admittedly, Avina’s hadn’t really had a plan for what Thayla should be doing. The raven-haired woman had had time to think about what she and Mikael would be doing, to plan ahead for her eventual success in resurrecting someone like him with her Soul Engine. But Thayla was a last minute addition, and one she clearly resented still at least a little bit.

Mikael had been the one to come up with Thayla’s current mission, and he was pretty sure that was the only reason she’d even been willing to go along with it in the first place. Still, he was pretty proud of the idea. Since Thayla couldn’t be with him burning down warehouses, and in fact needed to be seen moving about the city still… well, it only made sense to have her doing what Knights of the Rose did, but even more so.

Rather than focusing solely on her investigation into the abuse of the Hero Summoning Ritual, Dame Thayla Dawnguard would be seeking out injustice and hardship wherever she could find it. Her new goal, albeit with the investigation still presented as her overarching purpose… was to make the Alether City Guard look as ineffectual and incompetent as she possibly could. She was going to do their jobs for them, but better.

Avina had actually been rather impressed by the idea. Apparently, Mikael had struck gold there, because the City Guard under Zadicus were already plenty incompetent, ineffectual, and all around corrupt. And as a visiting foreign knight who had the Lord of the City’s blessing to operate within Alether, Thayla was pretty much untouchable so long as she kept her nose clean.

And she would. Mikael had ordered it of her, even if it still felt weird to be able to order anyone to do anything. But he needed her to play her part. And he needed to be able to play his.

Wearing a cloak, as well as a thick leather jerkin over a shirt to hide the glowing teal device embedded in his chest, Mikael eyeballs the warehouse in front of him for a few seconds more before finally making his move. He hasn’t JUST been thinking about all of this while he was stood here, after all. He’s been watching the guards move around the warehouse, studying their rotation and counting the number of unique faces.

It's not that bad, he notes. Only about five guards in total, from what he can see. Of course, two of them are dedicated to the warehouse’s only ground floor entrance. That just means Mikael has to get creative though.

He’s been eyeballing a second floor entrance on the side of the warehouse for a bit at that point, but now he actually moves towards it. There’s enough space on either side of the warehouse that leaping to the balcony from a nearby rooftop probably isn’t viable… or at least, it wouldn’t be for any normal human being.

Mikael is not a normal human being anymore. And before he allows himself to question it further, he focuses on the energy swirling around inside of him… and crouches down before leaping up. To his surprise, he all but flies through the air, before landing on the second floor balcony with a soft grunt.

Looking back at where he just came from, he blinks for a moment.

“… Right.”

Admittedly, it’s only been two days since their escape from the basement and regrouping at Avina’s safehouse. And in that time, Mikael has been… feeding on the city’s sewer rat population some more. As a result, he hasn’t lost most of the energy he got from Tak or his friends. So long as he keeps himself topped off with rat souls, the three human souls continue to supercharge him. He’s quite literally superhuman right now.

With Tak’s sword sheathed at his side, Mikael approaches the warehouse door on the second floor balcony, not surprised to find it locked. But he’s also not that surprised when he’s able to grab the handle… and with the proper application of strength, bust it open and slip inside.

The warehouse interior is dark to say the least, but also dry. Mikael isn’t sure if it’s magic or what, but the place almost feels temperature-controlled. Avina had assured him that there wouldn’t be any magical protections on the merchant’s goods, however. While technically such magic did exist it was rare and thus expensive enough that she felt safe in saying Zadicus wasn’t the kind of man who would go so far as to splurge for such things.

That meant… all Mikael had to do was start some fires. Reaching for the flagon of oil that Thayla procured for him alongside the leather jerkin and cloak, Mikael grabs the pieces of cloth bunched up in a pouch with his other. He soaks each cloth in oil before dropping it onto barrels below, never leaving the second floor catwalk that he finds himself on. The thing circles around the entire warehouse after all, making his job incredibly easy.

Once the oiled up cloths are in place, Mikael prepares the matches… and then, sprinting around the circumference of the warehouse, he drops a lit match onto each oil-soaked cloth as he goes, until eventually he reaches the second floor door that he came in through. Pausing for a moment, Mikael looks down to see the half a dozen small fires he’s started quickly growing bigger and bigger by the second. In mere moments, it becomes a proper conflagration.

There’s a few pyromaniacs in the back of Mikael’s mind really getting their rocks off right now. Some real freaky fire starters that have made their home in Mikael’s head and are having the time of their lives. But Mikael doesn’t pay them much mind. In fact, he lets a smile spread across his cowled face, even as he turns and steps back out onto the second floor balcony.

This right here… this was something he could get behind. No killing. No murder. Just harsh, honest payback against the bastard that put him in this position in the first place. Sure, it was also hurting the merchants who were storing their goods here. But Mikael couldn’t bring himself to care, not when the merchants who could afford Zadicus’ exorbitant rates could probably also afford a hit or two to their products.

And in the long run, it would only be good for them or so Mikael figured. Once Zadicus was out of the picture, they wouldn’t be forced to pay a premium to store their shit in the City Lord’s warehouses anymore just to keep their merchandise safe.

Dropping back down to the ground floor from the balcony, Mikael begins walking along, heading for the sewer entrance he’d used to traverse the city and get here in the first place. He could get used to this. He could-

“Oi! You there! Stop where you are!”

Mikael freezes as one of the warehouse guards calls out to him. Damn it all. He just had to jinx it.

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A/N: Oh no, Mikael has been caught! Call an ambulance... but not for him!

Anyways, as usual let me know what you all think, your feedback is everything to me! Also we're going live with Chapter 1 on all my public websites at the same time that Chapter 11 is going up here! Fingers crossed that people like it!