Meanwhile:
I laughed softly as I pulled my hands back, drawing my clairvoyance sensor back into me, that little…twat had no idea that while in the tavern, I was able to slip an empowered clairvoyance sensor into his robes so that when he got back to the palace I would be able to spy on him for hours. I quickly gathered my things before standing up from my bed as I grabbed my swords and things before walking back downstairs,
“Are…you already heading out again, Aram?” Dimarkis asked,
“Unfortunately, you know my work is never done. Always getting more and more work. Here is my rent for the next month.” I said, putting my rent on the table, I live in a…comfortable level, so I pay about…two-three gold a month for rent, but because Dimarkis is always being so nice to me and everything, I usually give him three-four, just in case he needs something extra for the mortgage. I saluted softly as I walked out of the shop’s backdoor before I brought Omen back, I got on his back as I pulled my snood and mask down and flicked the reigns, rising up softly as he started running his full gait out of the city. I grabbed the saddle-horn with one hand as I rose up softly off the saddle, leaning forward as the light of dusk darkened behind me. Best thing about not needing sleep, needing to eat or anything, I can ride for…days straight. Omen doesn’t need to eat or sleep either because he’s a fiend. Also, after a day or two of not eating, I also loose the need to go to the bathroom because there’s nothing in my body, no food, no water, no nothing.
It was the middle of the night, Omen currently running across tree-tops as he flew over them with the road far behind us, nobody would ever think of leaving the road on horse-back, but Omen’s not a normal horse, so he can do things like this leaving no trail behind me at all. I took a scroll out of my bag as I opened up a very, very long list of all of the noble families in Lodor, there’s like sixty or so noble families in this region alone, they hand out noble titles like rats hand out plagues, everyone gets it. My mask was off, but my snood still up because I can still feel the cold, my breath fogged through the knitted fabric over my face as I leaned against Omen’s neck, sitting backwards with my feet locked through a loop at the back of the saddle, the reigns pooled in my lap as I drummed softly on the scroll before I slid my finger across a name, La-Minnings. I have all of the names listed in order of closeness to the capital and the closest city to them and coded messages that only I know for how to find them, I am pretty good with puzzles and things, ciphers are child’s play for me, so making one up for my own is so easy, but for others, it would take them months to break it. I slid the scroll back into my bag as I unhooked a foot and leaned over the side of Omen, letting my hand brush the tree-tops, but leaving a trail of rotted, decaying blackened trees in my wake as I stole the very essence of their life. I’m not sleeping, but I need ways to regain my magical power, draining their living of life does that for me. I sighed as I put my feet in the stirrups backwards as I made some hand movements and things, casting the scrying spell as I took a thin chain with a mirror on it out of my bag, I also took something out of my shirt, a long thin black leather cord with a wooden framed pendant made of carved elephant ivory, it was my sisters. I sent the magic out and my vision swirled and changed, my vision was sent through bottomless darkness before erupting into bright daylight, where Sigia and Lodor are in the world, when it is night in Lodor it is day in Sigia, my vision swirled over the gray, bleak, dismal landscape of the new Lodorite controlled Sigia, smoke from factories where they forced my people to make magical weaponry or similar works made the air thick and heavy with smog, people were left…squandered in the streets without anything to call their own, dressed in such rags that I’m not even sure you could call them rags again before my vision passed over…the wreckage of the old palace, broken, crumbling and half swallowed by the surf, there on the cliff sides, they built a monstrosity of Lodorite architecture in the form of a palace. My old home was called the Court of Stars, in retort, they named this palace, the Sun Palace. My vision was thrust through a window high in the palace before fading into focus, the edges going blurry as a figure came into view, a woman in a wheelchair, shorter than me, shoulder length loose wavy auburn, big green eyes and the same caramel toned skin, fuller figured, but broad shouldered and hipped like myself, but she looked terrible: her eyes were sunken and had massive dark circles, her eyes were dull and lifeless, her cheeks were sunken in, she looked…frail. She dressed in a Lodor styled gown; thick and tight brocade with a jaw high neckline and sleeves ending at above the elbow, the ends adorned with a flounce of silk, stockings and heeled boots, her hair just tucked behind her ears that were scared and mangled, she had pointed ears like me, but when she was forced to marry the prince, he had her magic banished.
Calastina used to be called, The Platinum Shield because of her extremely powerful protective magics. She was sparred in the siege as a…present for the second born Lodorite prince, when they told him he was going to be in charge of Sigia, he went on this massive tantrum, but once they said they had the princess of Sigia for him to take as a wife, he turned 180, he wanted the power of being a ruler, but…his intense hatred for Sigia remains through and through. She was forced to marry him…or die. When we were kids, she’s five years older than me, she was so bright, cheerful and without a better phrase, a princess for the people, everyone loved her. Now, she’s quiet as death, refuses to talk to anyone or anything, she locks herself away in the Lodorite palace they built, if someone talks to her, she rolls away. I’ve seen her talk in these visions, she’s…missing teeth and are replaced with gold, her husband hates Sigia to the point that if he hears someone with a Sigian accent talking, he beats them, he beat her for her voice screaming at her to speak properly and not to sound disgusting. My sister was the patron of artists when we were younger, she was the best at all of the magic she did, she could with a waft of her hand throw a shield of starlight above the city protecting it from a bad storm, a tidal wave or divert earthquakes, now…she’s just…lifeless. Through connections and a very heavy hand in the underworld, I’ve learned that soon after she was forced to marry her, he…raped her multiple times, dozens if not hundreds of times, she had two kids: she has a seven year old son and a five year old daughter, but she’s been pregnant like seven times, but if the infant showed signs of arcane power, it can happen, did with me, he beat her till she miscarried and would often just do that without the arcane because he said he was ridding the world of another Sigian. She hates Lodor just as much as I do, she…doesn’t know I’m alive, nor does she know what I am doig. She knew I was out on my own when the siege happened, but she thinks I died along with everyone else. But I’ve heard her mutter to herself, alone…that she hopes I’m still out here trying to do something. She also hates her children and husband, she hates the idea of being around Lodorite because of what they’ve done. She also can walk, but he's broken her feet, ankles and legs so many times and had them set wrong on purpose so it is extremely painful to her, she’s always covered in bruises and injuries from him. If anyone says something about her husband or children, she starts bawling quietly, she never was around her children from the moment they were born, she was beaten by her husband once because she smothered a son to death. She’s also tried killing herself…a lot, I’ve seen, the prince however forbade it so anytime she does something, he has it correct: she’s jumped out of windows or out of towers only to be healed, poisons negated and injuries repaired only to be beaten by him for attempting to end herself.
The spell gives me ten minutes of sight on the person I’m looking for, so as the spell was fading, I heard the sound of leather straining and my vision snapped around to the door of the room she was in slamming open, and there the cunt-face himself stood, Price Frodnak Paxton, second born prince of Lodor, self-imposed arch-prince of Sigia and my sister’s rapist/abuser and forced husband. He’s extremely tall for a Lodorite being six feet tall, but extremely lithe and thin, weirdly muscular which on his runner’s body looks just wrong, like a painting of someone where the artist tried to make them look like a demigod hero just with rippling muscles, but gave them the width of a willow branch, pale skin, short swept back golden blond hair and blue eyes, sharp and angular feathers, dressed in all dark blue and white with a boring steel non-magical short-sword on his hip. He is…the worst person in existence to me, I will not stop till he is dead by my and or my sister’s hands. He loathes everything and anything Sigian, he beats my people including my sister for speaking, he can’t stand living in Sigia, he like other nobles believes we’re backwards, evil and disgusting, when he’s the one that beats my sister for speaking, breaks her legs to keep her from running away, rapes her then beats her till miscarrying if she gets pregnant, he nearly killed her when she smothered that newborn. I’ve heard him in scry spells screaming about how he wants the assassin murdering the nobles and military of Lodor to be found and killed. The spell faded as he started stalking towards my sister who just glared at him with the most poisoned daggers I’ve ever seen in someone’s eyes as he slapped his hand with a folded over piece of leather, the vision ended when he rose it far and hard going to strike her.
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