The Soul Engine Ch. 15 (Original Fantasy) (Patreon)

A/N: Minor timeskip, during which Mikael has been on that arsonist grind, lol.

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Its crazy how even the most insane of circumstances can start to feel routine. Mikael has been stolen from his home, thrust into a maddening situation, and finds himself up against the Lord of an entire goddamn City, with all the power and influence that entails backing him up. And yet, in what almost feels like the blink of an eye, two weeks have passed.

It wasn’t actually a blink of an eye, of course. A lot had happened in the past two weeks, almost too much to recount. But at the same time, it was all somewhat… rote. Mikael had gone after his second warehouse two days after the first and despite the heightened security, it had been a piece of cake. The guards around the warehouse had been doubled from five to ten, but it didn’t matter.

That time around, Mikael had been more cognizant of how the foreign entities in his head might try to fuck with him. With awareness came the ability to dodge the subtle traps that they tried to sometimes draw him into. Despite doubling the amount of guards AROUND the second warehouse, there still weren’t any actually inside the warehouse.

Mikael still didn’t fully know why that was. He had to assume that Zadicus simply didn’t trust his guards enough to actually let them get close to his customers’ goods. It made sense in a way. If the City Guard was truly as corrupt and useless as Avina liked to say they were, then they would probably try and steal some of the merchants’ goods if they were allowed anywhere near them.

Regardless of the why, the fact that the warehouse interior was empty meant that Mikael was able to do the exact same thing he did the last time and enter from the top. With the guards on the ground floor not bothering to look up, he’d been able to set the fires and get out… and this time he’d actually used his enhanced speed and strength to roof hop his way to safety without anyone even catching a glimpse of him.

On the other side of things, Mikael had decided to take Thayla up on her somewhat disingenuous offer. While her point about him needing to conserve the extra energy in his Soul Engine was a fair one, Mikael didn’t want to rely on the memories forced into his head if a fight came up again. And even if the skills weren’t actually his, he figured he DID need to keep them sharp.

And so, every afternoon when Thayla returned to the safe house from another day of do-gooding, she and Mikael descended to the basement where they would spar with one another and she would train him in swordplay. Apparently, his fighting style was termed ‘barbaric’ by the Knight of the Rose, though she was immediately embarrassed by her own words and tried to take them back.

Mikael had just laughed it off though. Barbaric was a good word for it, truth be told. He had just as many thugs and criminals in his head as he did soldiers and knights. More so, actually, given where Zadicus must have gotten the memories from in the first place. It didn’t surprise Mikael that his fighting style, which was an amalgamation of all of the dead men swimming around in his noggin, was so… rough and tumble.

It didn’t matter in the end though. Because after two weeks of training with Thayla, Mikael could confidently say that he was ready for almost anything. He could reliably defeat Thayla in a sheathed sword duel more often than not, and he constantly ran her ragged each night. Something that Avina actually approved of immensely, given their… other nightly activities.

He’d found himself sharing a bed with one or both of the women who’d come crashing into his life every night for the past two weeks. Only… Avina had yet to ‘let’ Thayla truly bed him. So far, she’d only allowed the Knight to provide a bit of oral stimulation, before taking over and riding Mikael… or having him ride her. He might have been more inclined to stand up for Thayla if Avina wasn’t so eager to give him her own body. Whether it was her bouncing up and down on his cock or him taking her on her back or hands and knees… she more than satisfied him.

Honestly, Mikael didn’t really quite know what to do with Avina or Thayla when it came to the weird relationship the three of them had. Indulging was one thing. But actually navigating both his AND their emotions? It was a bit beyond him at the moment. Whether that was because his brain was fractured and stuffed with a bunch of memories of manly warrior men who’d never had a soft or tender moment in their lives or just because he himself was bad at this hit, he couldn’t say.

One thing was for sure though… it was much easier to just continue bedding Avina and letting Thayla act as their ‘fluffer’. Especially since the Knight of the Rose seemed all too happy to just be included in their nightly activities.

But yes, despite all of that insanity, his life truly had become quite routine. During the day, he was either sent out to burn down another warehouse or stayed indoors to avoid detection. In the afternoon, once Thayla returned from her own daily activities, they tended to spar in the basement. And in the evening, after dinner time, Mikael usually found himself enjoying the company of either Avina, or Avina and Thayla.

Oh, and after that, unbeknownst to both women, once they were fast asleep and Mikael found himself lying awake staring at the ceiling… he would slip away down into the sewers and consume the souls of as many rats as he could find so that he could maintain the incredibly active lifestyle he found himself living.

Mikael knew logically that there had to be a finite amount of rats in Alether’s sewers even if so far he had yet to see any sort of diminishing population numbers on his midnight strolls. He also knew it was probably dangerous to go down there alone every night. But no more dangerous than anything else he did outside of the safe house, or so he figured. And besides, what else was he going to do? Become a killer? Expose his true nature to the Lord of the City while he was still hunting for Avina?

No… this was the best way of doing things. Mikael had to believe that.

Still, when compared to his nightly activities with Avina and Thayla, going after Zadicus Quinn’s warehouses was so much easier. He’s burned down half a dozen over the past two weeks, and at this point he knows they HAVE to be pissing the Lord of the City off something fierce. He’s even managed to avoid killing anyone so far on the occasions where the Warehouse Guards HAVE caught him and he’s had to fight his way out.

The contingents of guards watching Zadicus’ warehouses have gotten larger and larger, and Avina reports that it’s working… they’re most definitely putting the screws to the City Lord. Merchants are beginning to openly question whether they’ll be reimbursed for their lost goods or not and whether their goods are safe in Zadicus’ warehouses in the first place. And with more and more of the City Guard being stuck on warehouse duty, Alether as a whole is becoming that much more lawless.

Zadicus’ iron grip on his city is beginning to loosen. Before, crime was at an all time low, with only the truly desperate doing anything too foolish for fear of being caught by the guards and thrown into the arenas to die. But while the arenas were still operating and criminals were still dying in them… the guards weren’t quite as present anymore.

With so many of them tied up in hunting Avina or stopping the mysterious arsonist who kept burning down Zadicus’ warehouses, the actual streets of Alether weren’t quite so patrolled. Which meant they were becoming less and less safe.

That was where Thayla came in, but even she was only one person. The Knight of the Rose was out there every day in contrast with Mikael and Avina who constantly took days off to rest, recharge, and prepare for their next action. She was on the streets of the city, working tirelessly to stem the tide of petty crime indirectly caused by their actions. As Thayla put it, there were crimes and then there were acts of rebellion. She made sure to distinguish between the two, only going after the true criminals and letting those rebelling against Zadicus Quinn’s unjust rule go.

But in the end, Thayla could only do so much and things were definitely getting worse in the city, which the Knight of the Rose was less than thrilled about. Avina had to continually remind Thayla that that was the point. Things had to get worse so that Zadicus would feel backed into a corner and hopefully make a mistake… such as hosting a second Grand Melee and playing right into their hands.

Which brought Mikael to his latest mission. Crouched on a nearby rooftop, Mikael scouts out the latest warehouse as all of this runs through his head. Only… his eyes narrow the longer he spends looking at the damn thing. His outfit has seen a couple upgrades over the last two weeks. He’s got some simple leather leg guards to go with his leather jerkin, and both are painted black now to further mute the potential glow from his Soul Engine.

On top of that, he wears a mask over the lower half of his face now, with everything from his nose down to his neck covered up. He’d had one too many close calls with guards trying to get a good look at his identity the couple times they’d caught him in the past two weeks. Especially once they all figured out that he wasn’t aiming to kill them. They’d stopped trying to detain him and just tried to get details regarding his identity instead.

But getting back to the warehouse he was supposed to be destroying… this was a trap. Had to be. The place was practically unguarded, with only ten guards patrolling the perimeter and every single one of them looking nervous. The nervousness made sense to be fair, but the low numbers? Sure, it was still double what the first warehouse had guarding it, but it was half what his last target had had. Every single warehouse he’d gone after in the past week alone had had anywhere from twenty to thirty men assigned to watch it and the nearby streets.

He'd still managed to burn each one down, something that he was actually pretty proud of. But to suddenly drop back down to ten? Something was fishy. It was so very clearly a trap.

As such, the smart thing to do would have been to turn around and leave. After all, nothing was saying Mikael HAD to spring the trap, right? There were more warehouses than just this one waiting to be burnt down. And he hadn’t failed a mission yet, so missing out on one night wouldn’t be too bad, probably.

… But that was just it. He’d gone after six warehouses in the past two weeks and burned down all six of them. Turning away now, while the job was still undone? That didn’t sit well with Mikael. And not just because he had the memories of a bunch of soldiers and mercenaries swimming around in his head. Even before being summoned to this world, Mikael had always been a big proponent of finishing what you start.

He knew it was dumb. He knew it was foolhardy. But he sort of wanted to burn the warehouse down even if it was a trap. He wanted to wreck the place and then get away clean, regardless of what Zadicus had planned. That would really fuck with the Lord of the City’s head, right? To have devised some scheme to finally catch Mikael, only for it to fail completely and utterly?

The thought brings a smile to Mikael’s face. More of a savage grin, actually. And before he knows it… he’s inside the warehouse. With only ten guards milling about, sneaking in is easier than ever. He’s a bit more cautious about it, but ultimately entering through the roof has become his go to method. He has yet to be caught on approach yet, only after the deed is already done, so they still don’t seem to really know HOW he’s getting in.

Of course, he’s very much expecting the trap to be sprung the moment he enters the warehouse. He even as a rag soaked in oil in one hand and a lit match in the other, just in case he has to move particularly fast. He’s expecting to find the place cleaned out, but it’s filled with crates and all the usual merchant goods he’s seen in the other warehouses he burned to the ground. He’s expecting those to be facades, but after checking a couple of crates at random… they aren’t facades.

He doesn’t fully understand why this warehouse is so unprotected. But in the end, he supposes he can’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Pinching the lit match between two fingers for the time being, Mikael begins to go through the usual motions, setting things up so he can set the whole place on fire and make a clean getaway right after.

… Perhaps this wasn’t a trap after all? Perhaps he was-!

“GRAAAAAAAAAAAAARH!”

The war cry is the only reason he survives the initial ambush, truth be told. Though can it really be called an ambush when the ambusher telegraphs their presence so effectively? Now wasn’t the time to be getting philosophical about it either way. Mikael dodges and ducks into a roll just in time to hear the crunch of a heavy bladed weapon sinking into the crate he was looking at mere moments before.

Coming up out of the roll, he spins around and draws his sword, eyes wide as he takes in the sight before him. Pulling a massive, hulking battle-axe out of the crate she just crunched through is Bula, Zadicus Quinn’s second in command, bodyguard… and the orcish woman who helped hold Mikael down while her ‘boss’ fucked with his memories.

She’s faster and stronger than Thayla, Mikael immediately notes. Faster and stronger than him too? He doesn’t know. Either way, she doesn’t immediately move to attack him. Instead, Bula straightens up and brings her battle-axe up to rest on her shoulder, one handing it as she points at him with the wide, wicked grin of a battle junkie.

“Thanks for this. I’ll try and kill you fast.”

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A/N: I swear I don't mean to end these weeks on cliff-hangers. It just seems to happen.

Anyways, Bula's back! Anyone miss her? Well, here she is regardless. And hey, she's grateful to our protagonist! That's nice...

As always, hope people enjoyed and be sure to let me know what you think!