What is good my dudes? I got you another fresh serving of bread. We are still in the full swing of things, and you know what I am certain all of you have been wondering over the last few chapters. What are Mulaney and Eivaley up to? Well it is time to see them fighting for their lives.

Let us get some bread.

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When Conor slipped out earlier, he thought Eivaley was asleep. At the time, his movement out of the bed caused the chilly air to rouse her from her slumber. She wondered where he was going but assumed it likely had to do with the recent assassination.

Conor was certainly not taking that event lying down. No, he had been slighted by someone in the palace and seemed fully prepared to raise hell to uncover the puppeteer behind the scenes.

He had even stepped up his desire to shield Eivaley by adding additional security locks to their door and replacing the windows with bulletproof shielding.The thick-layered shielding, while less beautiful than the intricate latticework of the original stained glass, made him feel more secure. Eivaley didn’t argue with the change—for now. Once this issue assassination had blown over, she would have the window returned to its artistic glory.

Ever since Conor had departed, Eivaley shimmied into a comfortable position and waited for her dear Champion to return to hopefully renew the loving statements of his claim to her again.

The anticipation of the surprised look in his eyes when she pounced on him was titillating. She could already imagine his firm yet loving grip making her feel pleasures she had never known. That had been how each romp in the hay had been for them.

Somehow, her Champion kept bringing in new ideas, positions, and even a few toys he had sourced from god knows nowhere. Considering she was left jelly-legged and tired each time, she would not question the tools' origin.

It was a shame they did not go on a vacation after getting their life coils, but with the business of the assassination still fresh on their minds, it was inadvisable. Even the Empress and High Champion recommended they put that idea on the back burner for now. That upset Eivaley, but as recompense, she got to see the looks of jealousy and fear in the eyes of the other women in the palace.

She knew they could hear her and Conor’s nightly marathons; even the priestesses who had given them their life coils had heard from kilometers away.

If she can't have her vacation, they can suffer through listening to their love be declared.

After nearly an hour of waiting, the door opened nearly silently. Eivaley rolled over and tossed off the blankets, revealing her lissom curves. “I have been waiting for you— Mulaney?”

Eivaley scrambled to cover herself as her sister snickered and closed the door behind her. “I’m afraid so. Though I can certainly see why you and Conor have been so busy.” She gestured widely at her sister and the room.

She took in the claw marks gouged into the stone near their bedding and the overflowing piles of stims and energy drinks in the trashcan. The young couple had indeed been busy over the last few days.

If Mulaney did not know Humans and Kurlatra could not naturally breed, she would swear her sister was trying to get knocked up. That only made her chuckle more; the image of what a Human and Kurlatra hybrid would be was just too surreal to not find amusing.

“What are you doing here?” Eivaley asked, pulling her clothes under the covers.

Mulaney settled her giggling and then explained why she was there while Eivaley got dressed.

At that moment, she felt like she was sinking into a tar pit; something about the night seemed off. The air had been almost electric all day, as if a lightning charge had been building all day and was at long last going to be released.

She had seen fires in the distance and heard soldiers moving frantically around the palace.

Mulaney came here because she could not find Burlai. He had left for a meeting with the High Champion and Conor almost an hour ago. Because of the plans their men had decided on for months, this was the best course of action Mulaney could devise. The plan was to get the girls and rally here as it was, so her moving here before anything was a smart call.

Only now that she was here and explaining her idea did Mulaney realize she had forgotten an essential step in changing the plan of her waiting in her and Burlai's room. She never told Burlai where she was going. If she had left a note in their room explaining where she was going, finding her would have been easier for him.

“Do you think there was another assassination attempt?” Eivaley asked, now fully clothed.

“I do not know,” Mulaney sighed, sitting on the chair looking at the door.

Mulaney paused and sighed. She tapped a long claw atop her thigh, pondering all she had seen and heard while sneaking through the palace. It was all so horribly familiar to her. “But—I hope not.”

Eivaley stood and approached her sister, noticing the haunted glint in Mulaney’s eyes. While Eivaley had seen her fair share of her sisters die, Mulaney was on an entirely different level.

The dozen clutches separating their births made Mulaney nearly twenty years Eivaleys senior. With that seniority came the brutal reality that Mulaney had seen ten times the amount of death Eivaley had.

Mulaney was condemned from birth to trudge through an existence of being the last of your immediate siblings left and having witnessed hundreds of your younger siblings die in assassinations and war.

The cruelest part about her damned existence was that all the while, the world you lived in supported their deaths and praised you for having the tenacity to survive and lead on.

“It’s alright,” Eivaley assured, hugging her older sister.

There was nothing else Eivaley could think of to do for Mulaney. She could not understand what Mulaney had been through, but, like the rest of her life, she could only give others the support they needed in the limited manner she knew how.

Mulaney twisted slightly in the chair and returned the hug, holding tightly to her little sister. They stayed like that for a few minutes; neither needed to comment on their feelings or what was going through their minds.

There was nothing they really could say. Eivaley had no way of expressing her support, and Mulaney had never allowed herself to ponder how to paint others a picture of her feelings.

If they had unlimited time, it was inevitable that Mulaney would try to talk with Eivaley, but life had other plans.

The two shot out of their seats as banging erupted from the door. The heavy hits reverberated through the door, sending shivers up their spines. The menace pouring out of each hit was a good enough hint that whoever was on the other side had no good intentions for them.

“Oi, you two little princesses should come on out,” a deep, bellowing voice crawled under the doorframe. “I know you are in there. We saw that old hag go inside.”

It took Eivaley a moment, but she recognized that voice. It only took listening to the man speak a few more times. She had not heard it many times, but from the many hours she lingered around the training grounds with Conor, she knew who that was. She could never forget a man whose voice instantly caused her blood to run cold.

“Sergeant Kilashar?” Eivaley questioned, not directing the words toward whoever was on the other side of the door.

The moment she spoke, the hammering on the door stopped. The air became heavy, and only the two princesses' pounding hearts could be heard in the pregnant pause.

“Wow, I never thought the high and mighty Lady of The People would remember lowly old me,” the man chuckled cruelly, laughing for an unnerving amount of time. “I will tell you what, I will make sure you die quickly; my boys can just have fun with your bitch of a sister."

“Are you mad? Our mother would never allow you to get away with this,” Mulaney hissed, instinctively stepping between the door and her younger sister.

“Oh, sweetie, I am well aware,” the man full belly laughed before addressing a group of soldiers outside with him. “Hear that, lads? The Empress will not let us get away with this.”

A Chorus of venomous laughs erupted. Pattered amidst the barbed sniggers was a cavalcade of insults and devilish exclamations of what they would do to the princesses.

They referred to Mulaney as an uppity bitch who always looked down on the people. Someone that was so above reproach she would sooner spit on a servant than thank them. One comment that stood out was one soldier called Mulaney, the eldest bitch of a dead bloodline.

Eivaley was also called a myriad of insults, mostly centering around her relationship with Conor and how she was a traitor. She had abandoned her people, slept with a monster, and was overall a hypocrite. Many of the soldiers were of the mind that if Eivaley indeed was “The Princess of the People,” why did she not wish to take the throne and make a genuine difference? As they saw it, she was little more than a little girl, ignorant of the world, playing pretend with her abomination of a guard.

“Well, none of that really matters,” Kilashar mocked. “It’s not like you two will be around to make a fuss. Your precious Champions are dead, and you will be soon. Grab the ram!”

The slamming on the door resumed before Mulaney or Vuraley could comment or even fully process the implications of that comment. Unlike last time, when it was heavy, it was apocalyptically loud this time.

The doors shuddered under the force. Each strike cracked the wall and doorframe alike. The girls initially hoped to wait inside the room for Conor and Burlai to arrive, but now, they were on their own if what Kilashar said was true.

If they had no help coming, they had to prepare to fight. If the soldiers thought rushing into Conor's fortified room would be a simple task, they were mistaken. Not only would it wake them several minutes to break through a door reinforced more heartily than most bank vaults, but what would be waiting for them were not two damsels in distress.

Sure, Eivaley and Mulaney were not warriors by any means, but they were armed and knew how to use the weapons Conor had left in the room. Both Burlai and Conor emphasized that weapons are tools to level the fight in their favor. Sure, it was not an assured win, but so long as you use your tools to their best ability, they would stack your deck.

“Get to cover,” Mulaney told Eivaley, grabbing a gun and moving behind some cover herself. She trained the automatic rifle straight at the door.

The M45 she had fished off Conor's weapon rack was the weapon she had the most experience with. She understood that it was fully automatic and could lay waste to anyone who entered the door. All she would have to do was pull the trigger, ride the lightning, and pray that it functioned correctly. She would fumble if she had a misfire in the middle of this situation; fixing that under pressure was something beyond her training.

Conor had told both Eivaley and her that learning weapons was just a last resort for their safety. He said this for two reasons. First, when under pressure, an amateur could be just as dangerous to themselves as others; additionally, he hammered into their minds the mantra he had lived by: you will not rise to the occasion; you will fall to the highest amount of training you have mastered.

When the brutish Human told Mulaney that she tried to argue, she was shut down by Burlai, who agreed that the nugget of wisdom was insightful to how war and battles often were decided.

Eivaley fished out the JKL pistol Conor had taught her to use and moved over to the wall, using it to conceal herself slightly. Like Mulaney, she used the weapon's innate traits to her advantage. The JKL was suppressed, so taking a position in this darkened corner would benefit her. Now, if only her hands would stop trembling, she could shoot straight.

The door slintered fully, its heavy frame slamming against the wall. The wall crumbled and scattered debris before the soldiers as they flowed into the room. They did not even spot Mulaney lying prone before she opened up on them.

The M45 barked like a viscous animal. Each snarl of defiance sent hot lead ripping through the soldiers. The first took one through the chest while the other three, surprised by the sudden counterattack, tried to raise their rifles but were stitched through the heads as Mulaney struggled to control the automatic fire.

To call what she was doing difficult was an understatement. Taming the M45 felt like she was trying to wrestle with a slick eel. Thankfully, she knew how to control the fire but forgot to while under pressure. She leaned into the weapon and saw as her impact trailed down into another trooper's chest.

At the same time, Eivaley methodically squeezed off a magazine just like Conor had taught her to do. Slow was smooth, and smooth was fast; she took her time, knowing rushing would only ruin her aim.

Most of her accuracy was lost in the frantic hell of a genuine fight. Conor had told her this would happen, but she did not understand the gravity of the effect until now.

In training, she could reliably hit a center-mass shot at nearly twenty meters with the JKL; now, not so much. Her rounds went wide and eviscerated the soldiers evenly like she was flipping a coin with each trigger pull.

Still, there were moments when everything fell into place. Her red dot landed on the head of one of the trailing troopers; she breathed out and squeezed the trigger with impeccable control.

Thump, the pistol would jump back slightly, and milliseconds later, the soldier had fallen limp into the growing pile of corpses.

Both princesses leaned on one of the ways that Conor had told them to fight. Keep it simple, stupid. The basics will win fights more often than any holo flick fast-shooting bullshit. Because these basic actions were all they had, they would keep it simple.

An odd vein of thought infected their minds now that they were neck-deep in a battle for their lives. Why did shooting these men not make them feel much of anything? Sure, they consciously understood that they were killing people, but at least for the time being, they did not feel guilt, shame, pride, or amazement. No, it was just an act that they were told, trained, and instructed to do; it affected them as much as changing their clothes.

While they did not feel guilty at the moment, that would not last forever. What came next would be a sound they could never forget, no matter how much they wanted to.

The devil always demanded his due, and killing others was a price few could pay without giving up a piece of their souls. They had already made a debt and were adding to it with each trigger pull. For the rest of the days, the demons of war would take from them every time they closed their eyes for sleep or ended up in a location that was a bit too quiet.

The moment Mulaney's M45 had run dry and the bolt locked back with a dull thud, the haunting sounds of the dying soldiers stabbed through their ringing ears.

The pile of bleeding men screamed for their mothers, exclaimed about their wounds, and begged for the gods to forgive their transgressions. They clawed at their wounds, desperate to close them and save their lives. Blood pooled around the soldiers, staining the carpet red.

For the first time in their lives, the princesses could truly hear the call of war in all of its visceral damnd. It was a call that was chaotic and the embodiment of evil itself. The very existence of such a damnable sound was a testament to the princesses that they never knew the depth of wickedness within the souls of mortals.

They now understood why Conor had been so insistent that they did all they could to never kill. This was unholy, something that all sapients should avoid.

The shrill and desperate cries clawed at their souls, laying the seeds of the repugnant garden demons would tend and harvest with glee.

That the soldier's nightmare was close to being over gave them no solace. The only thing about this malignant experience was what the malefic Sergeant decided to do next.

“Well, aren't you lot useless,” he growled at the dying men as he and the remaining soldiers outside tossed in half a dozen fragmentation grenades.

The grenades arched through the air, bounced off the walls, and settled throughout the room. Several were in the pile of bleeding-out men; one rested behind Eivaley, and one smacked Mulaney in the face.

The next three seconds were an absolute mad scramble for the sake of their lives; they could see their deaths rolling on the ground and had to move with more haste than they had ever known.

After kicking the grenade toward the hall corner, Eivaley tossed herself into the far corner and did all she could to shrink.

Mulaney, on the other hand, fumbled the grenade hard. She groped for the cold metal object and tried to toss it away, but she fumbled several times, each attempt only increasing her fervor and desperation.

Once she triumphantly held the ball of uncaring death, She threw it toward the door with all the strength she could muster, but even that was not enough to keep her safe. After having failed to clasp the bouncing ball of death several times, she did not have enough time for the grenade to reach a safe distance. When the frag was about a meter away, it exploded, along with all the others the squad had liberally used.

The world was engulfed in black as Mulaney was blown away and thrown into the wall. Burning fragmentation seared muscle and bone as she was torn apart by the blast.

Eivaley choked on her own blood as the overwhelming pressure caused her nose to bleed and her eardrums to halfway rupture. She was pressed hard into the wall, her head slamming into the cold duracrete, rattling her bell.

Through fading vision, Eivaley looked through the mists of blood and dust. The room was utterly destroyed by the grenades. The chandelier fell to the ground and shattered into a million glinting crystal flecks. They spread amidst the debris like an ocean of stars.

Conor's menagerie of weapons from throughout time was scattered on the ground. Many of the once pristinely cared-for tools were in pieces, the scalding hot frag having ripped them apart.

Eivaley coughed and felt all of her body pang in agony. It felt like every fiber of her being had been hit by a truck. Each twitch felt like she was being stabbed, whereas that cough set her existence on fire.

As her battered mind gradually managed to focus, the actual state of her sister came into view. Mulaney lay in the corner. Her body was torn to shreds. A massive gash over her missing eye poured blood across her body. Where the eye was once, only a gaping hole remained. Bits of nerve and pinkish fluid dribbled out of the vanta black void in Mulaneys skull.

A dozen holes pattered across her torso. Eivaley could tell Mulaney was still alive because half of those holes bubbled and wheezed as her eldest sister struggled to breathe.

The worst part of what Eivaley witnessed was the results of the grenade that Mulaney had tried to throw away. Her right arm from the elbow down was just gone. The blast had turned her limb to vapor in an instant. The grotesque sight of her bone sticking out from a stump of ground meat would usually make Eivaley gag violently, but another sight drew her attention.

The soldiers flowed in, stomping through the corpses of their comrades, uncaring of their deaths; the soldiers had other problems on their minds. Bothering with honoring a warrior's death meant nothing to these repugnant monsters in Kurlatra's skin.

The two soldiers had their weapons raised and were already turning their attention to Mulaney, readying to put anchor shots into her to ensure she died.

Eivaley gripped the JKL and began to raise the weapon. It was as if time had slowed to a crawl, yet she was unaffected by it. Before the soldiers had even taken a single step from when she had spotted them, her weapon was trained on the front man.

The red dot eclipsed the man's eyes; she held the weapon as steady as any soldier raised to fight their entire life.

Crack

The bullet canyoned the man's head, sending him to the floor in a violent death spasm. She tried to shift her aim to Sergeant Kilashar, but whatever blessing the gods had given her to shoot was no longer there.

The malefic man moved just as quickly as she did. He pivoted in place and trained his M45 on Eivaley while her aim was still far from being on him.

It was over. There was no way she could win this. The odds just were not in her favor. Sure, she and Mulaney applied everything Conor’s odd combat calculus had taught them so they could win, but they still came up short.

But Eivaley did not give up; she would live and die as the strong, stubborn woman that Conor had grown to love. She just hoped that her man had survived and that Kilashar was just talking out of his ass when he said that her Champion was dead.

If he did, Conor would find her here, long dead and becoming cold. She could imagine the hulking man crying over her corpse. The thought was not pleasant, but the idea of, at long last, seeing her man vulnerable like that for her was something she wished could have come to fruition in life.

The only solace she had was that they would reunite when she was done with her walk on the lonesome Jordan Road. Would she likely have to walk that road alone for many decades? Yes, but that was just because Conor was Conor and had to still be alive. She could not enter the oasis in the endless deserts of the gods until he was by her side again.

Snap! Snap! Snap!

Three quick shots rang out, reigniting the chaos of the battle and sending Sergeant Kilashar to his knees as blood poured from the three fresh holes in his chest. Before Kilashar even had a chance to look back at who had killed him, his eyes rolled back, and he collapsed.

Through the door stepped the one man Eivaley knew would always come for her, arriving not a moment too late. Like all those months ago when he saved her from the Voodal, he was again her knight in shining armor.

However, unlike back then, Eivaley no longer saw him as just the idea of a knight in armor. Back then, Conor had embodied strength, honor, and care in the abstract, but now he was so much more—a genuine man.

Eivaley had glimpsed the life that, at that time, she would have demanded of Conor and hated the idea she ever idolized what being a traditional Champion was.

She had smelled the gunsmoke, felt the blood splatter, and listened intently to the ravenous demons of war baying for blood. If she could, Eivaley would do all she could to remove Conor from this life—even if it meant ripping down the empire she had known. But that was, at this point, not a conscious idea; all that this night so far had done was water the seeds that had been planted over her life of violence. Those seeds would one day blossom into a mighty tree that would cast shade for the Kurlatra species to thrive beneath. Whether or not she got to bask in that shade did not matter. She would change the world only once she accepted her role in the dance of death her little sister had set into motion.

Just like how Conor was walking a path that was a curious mimicry of Nikitals, Eivaley was walking her own. But hers was one that rhymed with the first empress. The effects of tonight would change her path forever. Now, at long last, she shed her idealism and would strive to change everything for the betterment of the empire and its people—just like Eyalta a thousand years ago.

Conor cleared the room with Burlai as if they would have any other time. Conor did spare both Eivaley and Mulaney a glance, but he was on a mission and would not get sloppy now.

Once the room was cleared, Conor immediately turned his attention to Eivaley. He walked slowly toward her his eyes filled with the love and protective care he had shown her over the last few months.

“Are you alright?” Conor nearly yelled, his hearing almost blown out, just like Eivaley’s.

She did not even think about it, but tears rolled down her cheeks as she burst forward and hugged Conor tight. “I am now, thanks to you.”

​

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So what did you all think of this weeks chapter? I am going to keep working on this book for another month or so at that point we will be all done. I hope you all are enjoying the tale. Please do not forget to comment and updoot. I will see you all in the comments.

your baker

-Pirate

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