And with that, the final gambit begins. There always comes a point where turning back becomes impossible. Most never see it arriving, but we have that opportunity now. I won't ask you to turn back, to reconsider, because I know that you won't, you can't. All I ask is that you see it now and understand just how long these dice will roll. I have seen it. Your comfortable position on your throne will turn sour before the end. If only you had not made an enemy of me. You should have known better.

- The Watcher of the Thrones to Exeter

I've never seen this part of the city after dark. The north district becomes a maze at night, only the occasional street lamp granting any hint of light as I race across the cobblestones, my bare feet slapping against the ground. The alleyway Priscilla disappeared down lets out onto another road. I stop there, looking this way and that, trying to catch any trace of the woman. I have no idea what I will do when I finally get my hands on her.

Some instinct tells me to turn left after scanning the street. I don't fight the impulse. My conscious mind registers the puddle as I pass it, the water still rippling from something having recently splashed into it. Stretching my senses to their limit, small things stand out to my eyes, the wobble of a bin on the corner of an alley, the faint sound of boots slapping the ground. It is too indistinct a trail to follow.

My presence explodes off my skin, a wave of red spreading out around me, seeping into the buildings and burrowing beneath the street. A flood of information assaults me, hundreds of people, each distinct in their ways, moving, speaking, living inside the bounds of my soul. I stumble on a curb, my toe almost breaking as I run headlong into the brick wall of a building, just managing to turn myself and take the collision on my shoulder.

I pant, massaging my temples, sculpting the reach of my presence. The discovery of a network of tunnels running below the city is interesting, but all the information about the rats and rodents running around down there only stabs my brain. A groan escapes me as my focus narrows, the anger still chewing up my stomach helping.

There. I see her, one street over and two blocks north, standing and looking out from the corner of an alleyway. She looks…scared, one of her hands shaking as she stares out into the darkness. Priscilla will not escape me.

Pushing myself away from the wall, I thump into someone I hadn't noticed standing there. Fire rushes into my hands as I blink the world back into focus. How could I not have noticed someone?

"Going anywhere in particular?" Yul'Mari asks. She stares back at me, calm and collected as I lower my burning hands, snuffing the fire out. Now that I look at her, my soul presence locates her in an instant. I must really have been focusing on Priscilla.

"What are you doing here?" I ask before taking a deep breath and trying to push down the thumping pain in the center of my skull.

"You and Jess left the party. She came back looking troubled. Then I saw you running down the street from the window. I'm sure that your friend is worried about you," Yul says.

"Priscilla Ca'Mari is here," I tell her.

Yul's mark of calm breaks the instant I utter the words, her brows knitting together. "You saw her?"

"She ran away, but she isn't far."

Yul looks around, noting the atmosphere of red and gold around us. "You can find her with this? I would very much like to speak to that woman."

"As would I."

"Do you have any shoes to wear?" Yul asks. "I know you are a powerful magician and all, but there are some nasty things on the street that you wouldn't want to step in."

"Of course." I duck into the shadow of the nearby alley, letting the dark hide the moment it takes for me to change my clothing through my inventory. The dress gone, replaced by the new assortment of magic items I picked up recently, I feel power race through me, filling me up.

Charlene Devardem Human(Level 64)(Rank 2) Emperor Conflux <Recovery Specialist>

Attributes Vitality: 150(270) Strength: 109(170) Magic: 984(1489) Defense: 134(246) Magic Defense: 113(212) Speed: 681(956) Recovery: 919(1411) Perception: 108(119)

Healing Points: 2703 Mana: 14888 Stamina: 7389

The magical equipment has become almost like a second skin, and despite the ruggedness of the clothing, it is far more comfortable than any dress I own. Perhaps that is something to add to the list of things I need to enchant: a magical dress.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

"We aren't going to kill her," Yul tells me, following me into the alleyway as I push into a jog once more. "Are you sure that you need all of that? It might send a poor message to show up with it."

"I would rather have it," I tell her, further focusing my soul presence. In the strange awareness it offers, I see Priscilla notice she shift in the wave of red, a shroud of aura appearing around her and making her body fuzzy. "I don't trust this woman not to do something."

"I wouldn't either," Yul mutters, keeping pace with me easily.

Even moving at my full speed, Yul manages to keep pace with me as I sprint through the streets. We almost manage to catch Priscilla immediately as I take us down a path she isn't watching. The duke's daughter stumbles at a poor time, her foot exploding an abandoned apple crate as we round a corner. My eyes lock with Priscilla's for a moment. She bolts down the alley she is tucked into when we are less than a hundred feet away, and the night turns into a true chase.

Priscilla is faster than me. Even with all of the effort I have put into increasing my speed, the difference between a magician's body and that of an endowed noblewoman is just too great. Streets flash past, hardly noticed, as she leads us on through the chase. She might be faster, but she can't escape me. I push myself, my soul presence becoming almost like a tether, a beam of red and gold energy focused solely around Priscilla, ignoring all else.

Priscilla almost escapes the reach of my soul presence as we have to stop at a checkpoint before following her out into the lower city. My head is pounding as we continue, the streets growing more narrow and camped with people, the information drilling into my brain like a fire poker. I refuse to let her get away.

We stop as an iron grate, the top edge slightly ajar, a hole behind leading into the bowels of the city. Yul looks back at me, pausing in the middle of pulling back the metal covering, not seeming to care about the high whine it elicits.

"What is it?" she asks me.

"This isn't suspicious to you?" I ask her in turn. "How often do young noblewomen run into the sewers?"

Yul steps back, letting the grate fall flat once more with a bang. "That's a good point. You are thinking that she is luring us somewhere. Can you still sense her?"

"I can," I confirm. The tunnels running beneath the city are a tangle. Many people dressed in stressed clothing and with forlorn faces occupy the first few levels, but beyond that, the crowd grows sparse. Priscilla runs, even now, going deeper and deeper in. "It becomes more difficult to guide my soul presence through the maze of pathways, but I see her. She is still running, making for the lower levels."

Yul glares down at the grate. "I don't intend to let her get away." With a grunt of effort, the woman pulls the grate free of its housing.

"It is likely some kind of trap, my lady," I tell her.

That gets the woman's attention. Her head snaps up toward me before she can dive into the tunnel. "Do you think a high-born lady would set a trap for you like that? How deep is your vendetta?"

After everything that happened with Coriander, I don't trust a noblewoman's dignity or honor a whit anymore. "This wouldn't be the first one to try and have me killed," I tell her.

The woman's brows rise at that before she slowly nods. "I believe you." She tsks, looking down at the hole in frustration. "I already have my own reasons to dislike this girl, but if she is attempting to add murder to those reasons, then I would like to know. Whatever compatriots she might have would never attack me, and if she has found ones that would, I need to know about it. You said the lower levels? Leave this to me."

Before I can say anything, Yul slips into the hole. She cuts through the line my soul presence makes in its connection to Priscilla, landing on the floor of the tunnel below, her delicate shoes clicking against stone. Yul doesn't even spare a look back for me before she begins to walk down the tunnel.

"Tits and honey," I swear, stepping to the edge of the dark hole and following after.

Hollow eyes look up at us as we glide past, pushing deeper and deeper into the labyrinth beneath the city. So many souls. Here are the dregs, those unable to even fight for space in the slums up above. This beast tide needs to end.

The twisting pathways grow even more chaotic, the walls of the tunnels themselves showing centuries of age and degradation as we continue deeper. Well-placed bricks give way to molded stone, broken walls spouting dirt like a drunk girl at a party. Our feet begin to splash in fetid water, left stagnant for so long that scum has build up on the surface. I grab Yul, stopping her when we reach an intersection.

"She has stopped, up ahead," I tell her.

"Finally," Yul replies, her voice matching my whisper. "I would like to be out of here. Is there anyone else with her?"

"One moment," I say.

Far ahead, Priscilla stands alone in a long a flat room made of smooth stone and shin-high water. Sixteen pillars of stone throughout the chamber support the ten-foot ceiling and the weight of the city pressing down from above. Priscilla is there, wading in the center of the room, her chest rising and falling as she stares about her with wide eyes. I see what she does as my presence expands to encompass the space, and I wish I didn't.

My feet start racing before I can think to approach softly, Yul splashing through the water behind me. The smell of iron and sickly sweet decay hits me as we make it to the chamber, the full black of the underground unable to spare me the sight. Water laps at me as I wade forward, eyes trained on the darkness where the elven noblewoman stands, shivering and staring about. I can see them without looking, my awareness too high at the moment.

Bodies lay in the water, fourteen of them, set aside against a wall in a loose pile, their blood mixing with the ebbing tide and giving the whole chamber a scent of death. I only recognize one face among the pile, a man who is part of the 4th army, one of our scouts. My eyes fall on Priscilla. The look of fear in her own eyes lets me know she can't even see me down here.

"What have you done?" I demand.

The woman's face turns at the sound of my voice, focusing on me. Her mouth opens to speak.

"Ri–" Galea screams in my mind.

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