Marked Ones: Advent of the Demon Prince

Chapter 202: Lady al Famyn

Elize al Famyn had spent a short amount of time licking her wounds from losing in her first fight at the Exhibition Tournament. She was not given the chance to fight against Titan… or rather Lord Kane, let alone time to speak with him.

Several hours after the tournament concluded, the banquet began and she lost any and every chance to interact with Lucius on the floor of the ballroom. Nobles continued to introduce themselves to him as a powerful nobles from Eroa and left her little opening to try and advance.

However, the moment he was free, the aura around him was oppressing, like he was forcing people away from him. Elize had no choice but to give up the chance of interacting with him. She returned to her aunt in defeat.

When she approached her aunt Voltara, the woman had a look of horror plastered on her face and several empty bottles of wine scattered about her room. Voltara told her to forget about the mission and ignore Lucius Kane. Their plans to bring him to their side had halted for the moment, but she declined to explain why.

Elize thought back to those moments sometimes, but she no longer cared. Instead, she had a better distraction at the moment. Rustling around in the sheets next to her was a young-looking elven man. His arms were wrapped around her with one of his hands cupping her chest tightly.

She disentangled herself from his grasp, leaving him to lay in the bed alone under the silk sheets. The elf was her aunt's personal guard, Alerion. He was marked and very good at his job, among other things.

"Mistress, the information you requested." A woman in a fancy maid outfit bowed and gifted her a letter sealed with wax.

Elize took it gingerly and gave the maid a sweet smile before kissing her on the cheek. As she pulled away, she dragged her finger down the maid's neck. "Thank you my sweet, you may go for now."

The letter was from her aunt Voltara who had been visiting Aedrider. She granted Elize temporary command over her spy network in passing. The letter discussed a few actions that were explicitly banned. One of the most prominent requirements was to leave Lucius Kane and anyone related to him alone.

Elize was not supposed to help them, hinder them, investigate them, or even interact with them in any capacity.

Everything else felt pretty standard for her aunt's wishes. This had been done a few times before, so Elize had a good understanding of how things worked by this point.

Rustling blankets sounded out behind her as Alerion climbed out of bed and approached her quietly. He was not trying to conceal his presence, so much as he was choosing to not interrupt what she was doing.

Elize recognized his presence immediately and turned around to look at him with a sly grin. "You know," she giggled, "I have to say this is the greatest perk of Auntie leaving the country. Having you serve under me, Sir Alerion."

"And here I was thinking that I was protecting you from above, Lady Elize al Famyn." He returned her giggle with a shy smile. "What is it you would ask of me? Though I enjoy mixing business and pleasure on occasion, business is still important."

"Ah, I don't really have anything pertinent for you specifically. I was going to ask you to look into someone for me, however, Auntie expressly forbade it. So, we will skip that one for now." She advised. "I have a few more documents here, let me see if there's anything that could use your attention…"

While she slowly thumbed through the documents she had been gifted, Alerion read the direct order from his master, Lady Voltara al Famyn. "So you do not want me to investigate this… Lucius Kane?"

"Hmm?" Elize muttered, fully distracted by her reading. "Oh, no. You should definitely not do that. He is not what you would expect from an Intermediate Rank. There also seem to be a number of people moving on in the background for various reasons right now, so I think the waters surrounding him have been muddied with confusion for now.

"Though, I might have something. This… cult that Auntie has been looking into. I've heard that attacks are becoming more frequent. There was even one in the capital city just before the event started… We are tracking down some leads. Can you help in that investigation for now?"

Alerion bowed and kissed Elize's hand. "Of course, my lady."

"Good. You are dismissed, Alerion… but do return, I have other assignments for you to perform." She said with a wink.

Without a sound or any warning, the elf stepped away from her desk and vanished into thin air. He was extremely adept at his job and stealthing around, so she was not surprised he simply vanished like that.

Thinking she had spent enough time with thoughts of Alerion, Elize returned to looking over her data. It seemed that Voltara had overstretched herself by offering a number of men as resources to assist in researching the nut jobs that have been randomly attacking cities and populated areas.

So far, none of the attacks had any clear reasoning or pattern between perpetrators. The only thing that matched them to each other was the fact that they attacked out of nowhere, used slurred speech, and mumbled incoherent words that mentioned a 'throne of creation'. Even then, most of them couldn't be understood well enough to hear even that.

It was unclear if it was directly related to what was happening, or if there was a secondary religious group taking advantage of the chaos caused by psychopaths to co-opt the notoriety that gave them attention, then direct that attention into the religion's fame.

Something Elize had heard long in the past was 'there's no such thing as poor advertising', came to her. That referred to the possibility of multiple groups being involved with one taking advantage of the negative fame to garner attention… however would that apply if the attention referred to multiple counts of attempted murder? That was not very likely, or at least it was not like that to Elize.

The next few steps she took were to organize all the units she was aware of being out of the country and focused on tracking down the strange attackers. Though there was unlikely to be something new, she simply had to look.

Of the countries, it seemed like Arcadios was experiencing a higher rate of violence than the other countries around it. The situation was strange and it felt like it was pointing to a big event on the horizon. Either way… something exciting was brewing in the air.