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[NSFW] - Celestial Hymn (Celestial Forge/asoIaF SI)

Celestial Hymn
Chapter 26
-VB-
Rosia felt thrills of excitement travel up her spine as she traveled with her lord's retinue.
She was going to King's Landing for the first time! The thought filled her with jubilation, and she wondered what kind of lords and ladies she would see from her lord's side.
She squeezed her eyes shut as the Stormland breeze slammed against her. She weathered it, even moving at her normal pace through it, until it disappeared as quickly as it had come. Its departure, however, had been not natural.
She saw one of the "mages," apprentices of her lord, holding a cyan flamed bronze lamp in front of themselves no more than ten paces from where she was in the retinue caravan.
As she stared into the mesmerizing flame, she couldn't help but envy them.
Sure, she had known that her lord was a little weird - and possessed odder things - before he announced it all, first by becoming the Voice of the Seven (a title she knew he disliked) and then by taking on apprentices for his magic.
She had also tried to become an apprentice. Magic looked and sounded wondrous. She's seen the things he did, and wanted to do the same.
Lord Marris looked at her sadly as he set a purple gem down after asking her to hold it.
Nothing had happened, and her stomach sank.
"Normally, I can feel even a little bit of magic if it is within a person, and this includes the potential to wield magic even if they don't have a mana reserve, which is true for currently all of my apprentices," he told her. "I'm afraid that you lack even that ability."
She sat down, downtrodden.
"I'm sorry. This is something that is related to birth, so I can't…"
"No, it's alright, milord," she mumbled.
At least she had tried, right?
"There is something else I can do, however. Consider it a reward for your service to me so far."
She pulled her hand up and sprayed it out. On her index finger was a small bronze ring. Bronze was something of an obsession with her lord, she thought as she held her magical ring, her lord's reward to her.
He described it as "Ring of Protection." It used the sun's light to recharge itself and would protect her against both magical and mundane attacks. He's shown it himself, firing an arrow into the sky and then letting the ring protect him when the arrow fell to strike him.
She had marveled at the translucent blue orb that protected him.
She felt its protective warmth in her finger, waiting like a man-at-arms to protect her should the need come. More than that, she did not need to be aware of the danger for the "shield" to protect her.
She just needed to be careful and not put herself into harm to reveal her and her ring's worth. Thieves were all around, after all.
Still, she felt envious of the apprentices, because they could do more, even if they relied on tools made with her lord's touch.
She sped up a little and caught up to the apprentice closest to her. "Hello," she greeted.
The apprentice, a young girl, looked at her and gave her a stiff nod. Rosia saw that it was more out of nervousness than any arrogance of the nobility or those with power.
"Hello. How may I help you?" the polite young girl asked her from under her unnaturally immaculate purple-rimmed white robe. Rosia have seen on more than a few occasion dirt landing on those robes and sliding right off. "You are Housekeeper Rosia, right? A favored servant of Lord Marris."
Did it feel good to be recognized like that? Yes, yes it did.
"I am indeed Rosia. It's a pleasure to meet you…?"
"Charra," she replied. "It's a pleasure to meet you as well."
"I just want to know what using magic is like."
"... It's a wonder," she whispered as she looked down at the cyan flamed lamp, which was what blocked out the Stormland winds for this part of the caravan. Interspaced throughout the caravan, apprentices like Charr kept the wind off of the people, making their travel smoother for it. "I can do a lot of things, though Lord Marris doesn't let me do all of them. He lets the more experienced apprentices do things like throwing boulders."
"Throwing boulders, huh?"
"Yes. I want to do that, too, but he warned me that I was too weak for it. That I can't do it until I was older," Charra pouted.
Rosia thought that it was cute on the round-faced and raven-haired girl.
"What kind of magic do you want to do?"
"... Water."
"Water?"
"Lord-Master showed us water magic and made a rainbow in the air."
Rosia blinked. "Truly?"
Rainbow was a symbol of the Seven. Just as the Seven-pointed star had seven points, rainbows have seven colors, and each colors represented an aspect of the Seven. For him to effortless create a rainbow when only natural phenomena like rain could before showed the apprentices that he truly was the Voice of the Seven.
It was another thing to be envious about.
'Why not just say it?' she asked herself. It wasn't like she was going to make enemies. "I'm envious," she sighed forlornly and honestly.
Charra puffed up with pride. "It is something to be jealous about, right?" she asked not hurtfully but more centered on herself.
Rosia scoffed and pinched the little girl's cheek. "Ow ow ow ow-!"
"Yes, and telling me to my face that I should be jealous will make me happy?"
"You said it yoursel-! OW OW OW-!"
"Cheeky bugger."
"OW-! Okay, can you stop for a second? I need to turn off the spell."
She did, and the cyan flame disappeared.
The wind … did not come back.
She looked forward and saw a land beyond Stormland. Her first time outside the Stormlands.
It was a land of trees and soft breezes. Of a sky filled with fluffy clouds.
This was the Crownlands.
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[NSFW] - Celestial Hymn (Celestial Forge/asoIaF SI)

Celestial Hymn
Chapter 27
-VB-
The world shat on everything and everyone.
'Well, that's not true,' Robert Baratheon, the King of the Anda-. Fuck it. Just Robert. Not the fucking king, not the first of his name, not the first of anything. Just Robert. 'The world is shit because the people who make it are shit.'
He wasn't completely a brute that his foster father and sworn brother as well as everyone else thought him to be. It's just that when he got down to it, he preferred to do rather than think. Oh, he could think. He thought a lot, actually.
He thought a lot about his lot in life was both the best and the worst someone could have it, because if he wasn't the king, then he might not have had to marry the Bitch Lannister. He might not have to deal with the Bitch-Lord Lannister. He didn't have to deal with the Small Council.
He could just wallow in his own fucking sorrow of losing Lyanna on his own, let Renly take over because Stannis was going to fuck everything up if he ever became the Stormlands, and just go to an early grave.
Aside from Ned, who he had just convinced to come down south, there really wasn't anyone he trusted or cared for. Was he fucking asshole father for not loving all three of his trueborns? Yeah, but Tommen was a coward, Myrcella looked too much like her mother if a little softer, and Joffrey was …
How the fuck did he get a spawn like Joffrey? What kind of a child except a mad one splits the guts of a pregnant cat and thinks it proud?
Fuck, he's met enough of his bastards to know that every single one of them was better than all of his trueborn! What was it? Was it the lack of hardship? Oh, he could try something about that, but his bitch wife would never let him. No, it would devolve into a shrieking and shouting fest, he would lash out and then feel guilty afterward.
Was it any wonder his life sucked?
Well, there was one recently great thing.
Lord Alan Marris, or just Al when they were drinking in private, was a new friend. Yes, he was calling a lesser lord his friend, because the guy was just likable like that. He was also very free with his outright magical gifts. The cloak he got from him wasn't magical, just new and awesome, but the point was that Alan was a trustworthy guy. Never asked him for anything. Never did stupid shit like the Lannisters or his brothers. Never acted out beyond what he had to do.
Robert opened his eyes when someone knocked on his door.
"What?" he growled out grouchily.
"It's Barristan, Your Majesty. You asked me to alert you to Lord Marris's approach. He is now nearly at the gate. And I think you should be out for his procession."
"Are you-?"
"He is using magic, Your Majesty."
Robert felt the few drops of ale in his stomach evaporate.
"...What?!"
---
Robert gawked in awe at what he saw.
As his friend marched into the city from the south gate at the head of a procession… And they were using magic.
Even though it was mid-day, they carried with them light brighter than the sun above the heads of each robe and hood-dressed acolyte-wannabes. The unusually uniformly well armored and armed men-at-arms were nothing but a hindrance to the light show. The acolytes of magic (what else would they be?) each carried a hanging lamp that swung gently from side to side with colored fires, sometimes even multiple colors at once.
The smallfolk and the Gold Cloak all scrambled out of their way. Cowards.
"ALAN!" he boomed with a laugh as he saw Lord Alan Marris no more than a hundred steps away.
The man wore the weird purple robe Robert first saw him in with an "ultramarine blue" cloak of his own. He carried the same gem-embedded staff of his. The interesting part was the … floating crystals. Giant floating crystals that were each the size of Robert's belly, and there were two of them floating, one on each side of Alan, as he stepped up.
And then Alan knelt.
"It is wonderful to see you hale and healthy, Your Majesty."
Okay, now this felt wrong.
"Okay, okay, no kneeling!" he growled out as he grabbed the man by his shoulders and pulled him. "The 'Voice of the Seven' should not be kneeling to me!" It was just an excuse to not have both of his friends kneeling to him.
Alan smiled. "If you say so, Your Majesty." He then turned sideways. "As you can see, Your Majesty, I have decided to stop hiding. I present to you the Crystalline Guard, my personal company of magicians and enchanted weapon-wielding warriors of the Stormlands! Call upon us whenever and wherever you want, Your Majesty. We shall answer your call to arms with glee!"
Robert stared at him for a moment before laughter bubbled out of his belly.
Alan never ceased to amaze and amuse him.
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[NSFW] - Celestial Hymn (Celestial Forge/asoIaF SI)

Celestial Hymn
Chapter 29
-VB-
It was a disaster.
What else could it be?
The day a powerful army had been pledged to the king, the commander of that army nearly becomes assassinated?
There was a goddamn limit to the intrigues of the court, and this was taking it a step too far.
Never mind the fact that Lord Marris was his personal pick, the man raised to the station of a lord, but he was also the betrothed of his niece! He was one of the closest lords to the royal family. His family! An attack on him was an attack on the royal family - and thus, by extension, Renly himself.
If word of the attack got out, then it would signal to all of Westeros and beyond that the king and his allies couldn't even keep valuable assets and allies safe. He needed to find the culprit fast, if only to sate Robert's wrath when someone broke the news that Alan had nearly been assassinated.
"I do not believe that it was any of my demesne's neighbors."
Renly met Alan's firm stare.
"What makes you say that?" he asked. "They have been the most belligerent towards you. Outside of your own smallfolk."
Alan smiled condescendingly. "Aggressive as they might be, they have wasted their time fighting me instead of being my friend. They are also not wealthy enough to hire a Faceless Man."
Renly almost cringed outwardly, but he had enough training and experience under his belt to not show such weakness so overtly.
It was a miracle - or was it merely a contest of magical arms? - that Alan survived the Faceless Man and turned the table on the member of the famed assassin order. It was going to be a sensation. No, it was going to be a rallying point for the Baratheons. How many could claim to have survived a Faceless Man's assassination attempt and also call that survivor their family?
No one but the Baratheons, that's what.
"... Can you use your magic to find the culprit?" he asked his loyal subordinate and soon-to-be extended family.
"I can," he spoke slowly. "But I am not sure if that is a good idea, Renly."
"Why not?" he asked curtly.
"Because if the Master of the Law gave me, and by extension, my Crystalline Guard - a legal precedent to use untrusted and untested magic - as far as the rest of the world is concerned - to find a direct political opponent. "I believe it will give our political opponents a case for an alliance against us."
"And who would you consider our enemies?" he asked.
"Reach, Dorne, and Iron Islands."
"Dismiss the Iron Islands. They are negligible," Renly scoffed. "So then, Dorne and Reach, huh?"
"Assuming that no one else is involved, yes," Alan sighed. "If, let's say, a Stormlander lord is implicated using our magic…?"
Renly frowned. "No one from the Stormlands would accept it."
Alan nodded. "We would need more evidence than finger-pointing because that's what my magic will essentially be considered until such a time comes where its presence and usage is not only common but widely accepted."
Renly sighed. "Okay, so magic will hinder us. Do you have any suspect?"
"I … do."
"... Who?" Renly asked. He didn't like how Alan was hesitating. The man never hesitated. Oh, he patiently bided for time and deliberated, but he didn't hesitate in Renly's presence and letters.
"The Master of Whispers."
"Varys?"
Alan nodded gravely. "I know that he is a man who suffered at the hands of a self-proclaimed magician in Essos."
Renly blinked. He hadn't known about that.
"Wait, is that why he is a eunuch?"
"Yes."
"By the Seven, that's … that's a good reason for him to want you dead."
Alan nodded gravely.
"How did you come to find out about this information?"
"By magic, of course," his troublesome vassal replied with a grin. "I … also know more than I should about many others."
And suddenly, Renly realized that magic had other uses than the overt.
No, he should have expected it!
"Exactly what kind of magic do you have in your possession, Alan?" he asked as he leaned forward.
There was a pause, and Alan's eyes looked dazed and far away, but it disappeared quickly. Did something happen?
"Only I can use the magic," he replied with a sigh. "None of my acolytes are advanced enough."
"... Then why not use that magic to find the culprit?"
"It was how I discovered the Master of Whispers' past."
"I see. Nothing else?"
"It … isn't completely up to me for what information I receive."
So it was a little bit of unreliable magic.
… what was the cost?
Then he had an idea.
The thing that Lord Arryn was looking into before his death. It would be hitting two birds with one stone: understand the cost of Alan's magic and get an answer
"Then can you use your magic to answer some questions for me?" he leaned in. "and what would be the cost?"
Alan looked hesitant.
That was twice in one meeting. How curious.
Perhaps he was pushing too hard and too much at once.
"Perhaps next time," he said as he waved. "But if you do find a solid evidence on who called that assassin on you, be sure to let me know."
"Of course, Lord Paramount."
Renly smiled. "Good, good."
"... I do have a request, though."
"Tell me. If it is reasonable, then I don't see why i can't help move your request."
Alan smiled devilishly. It was the same smile he had when he gifted Robert and his children with their individualized gifts, the capes and swords.
"Considering that I almost lost my life, I would like to have my residence within the Red Keep."
Renly blinked.
He'd been expecting something ridiculous.
But then again, Alan had always been a reasonable man if with somewhat extreme reactions.
"I don't see why not."
"With my own Crystalline Guards along the corridors that I will be residing in and allowing them to do nightly patrols. Magic can find magic, you understand?"
Ah, there was that extreme reaction he was just thinking about.
"You realize that you are asking for things outside of my purview? I make and enforce laws, advise my royal brother, and carry out the King's Justice, not micromanage the Red Keep."
"But you can?"
Renly grumbled. "... I'll look into it."
Alan beamed at him.
Renly wondered if Alan was like him. He wasn't bad looking and the man did have a charming honesty about him.
Perhaps he'll have someone else ask discreetly.
"Speaking of which, I haven't gifted you something significant for you like I did for Robert," Alan hummed as he reached into his cape and pulled out a long box that fit into two palms.
Renly took it cautiously and undid the latch keep the two wooden lids together. His eyes widened as he saw what was within it.
He gingerly lifted a narrow dagger with the ripple pattern characteristic of Marrisian blade.
"A gift from a vassal to his liege."
Renly chuckled. "I will cherish this, my friend."
"Oh, and another one," Alan added as he pulled out another box. Then he whispered. "Though I do not do so, this is for your lover."
It took Renly a moment to realize what Alan was getting but he did.
Oh, well, that's too bad then.
It was another dagger.
"Put them side by side," Alan told him with an excited gleam in his eyes and corners of his lips jerking up.
Renly's eyes widened as he put the two daggers together to seamlessly form a shortsword.
His jaws dropped at the magic he just beheld.
He looked back up and saw Alan's grinning smile.
"Only best for the family, you know?"
"Only best for the family indeed," he muttered in agreement.
-VB-
Okay, there was another miss by the Celestial Forge but I'm okay with that. I already had a lot on my plate right now.
As I left Renly's office, one of my Crystalline Guards walked up beside me.
"Your orders?"
"I will be living in the Red Keep now, but the manor that I bought will still be in our care. I want the Third Arm stationed there at all times while First and Second Arms will ready themselves for a possible stationing in the Red Keep."
"Yes, milord."
"Good. The manor will be my new probably temporary workshop, so it needs to be secure, you understand? Secrets can get people killed. Or in our case, weapons we don't want released to the public will be devastating."
"I understand, milord. Any unauthorized personnel will be kept out at all cost."
"If they are not great nobles, then execute them on the spot."
The guard paused while I continued to walk forward, and he hurriedly caught up to me after only a moment.
"Yes, milord." He sounded troubled.
"Albert."
The guard perked up when I called him by his name.
"Remember that tens, if not a hundred, of your comrades may die if someone ever gets into the workshop and steals a valuable material. Worse, it may give our enemy a chance to understand my magic, which protects us all."
"That will not happen."
"Good. I trust you."
I kept the smirk to myself as I saw from the corner of my eyes him straightening his back.
"Dismissed."
He bowed and quickly disappeared.
I allowed myself to smile as I hummed.
It was intoxicating, this authority. To have others following me and begging for scraps.
Oh, I wasn't like this before, but ever since I put down the riot, I have become used to others bowing to my authority. It felt right and safe.
Or maybe I was always a manipulative bastard and it wasn't until recently that I got the chance to really flex it.
It was time to get back to the manor. I could probably make some wonderful things before the tourney started in the coming days. Who knows what I'll make? Even with just the Azerothian skills, magic, and database available to me, I could make some mish mash of hybrids that even I would not be predict.
Ah, the joys of creations.
Half of it came from surprising my friends and - more importantly - my enemies.
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Gusfes, Vagabond replied to a thread you are watching at Questionable Questing.
[NSFW] - Celestial Hymn (Celestial Forge/asoIaF SI)

Yay, 30th chapter of CH!
-VB-
Celestial Hymn
Chapter 30
-VB-
Varys sighed.
'Oh dear me,' he thought to himself as he poured himself a small cup of wine.
The latest scandal to hit the halls of the Red Keep was the near assassination of the up and rising Lord Alan Marris of Brownspear.
Or as people were starting to call the openly magic practicing lord: the Mage Lord.
It irked him a lot to have magic practitioner so closer to him, one so invested in keeping the Baratheons and Lannisters in power, and be unable to do anything.
He's already tried to insert a spy, but the damnable magicians had a way to determine a person's intent.
Sure, the details were not captured by their detection magic. Worse, the fact that the servant he tried to get into their camp wasn't even aware of what the work he was supposed to be doing made it harder for Varys to find the right person to slip into their camp.
Because if even a little greed was enough to set off alarms, then exactly what kind of person could join them?
-VB-
"As you have ordered, milord," my secretary/acolyte began as she read off of a paper. "We have had nineteen infiltration attempts, and have turned away all of them."
I hummed from where I lounged sideways on a long bed in my new Red Keep room. "What about the ones who didn't get picked out by the intent detector?" I asked.
"Two. A desperate girl trying to find work and feed her family and an old man who's more curious than greedy."
"Describe them in detail for me," I replied, bored.
See, I knew that people would try to get their claws into my Crystalline Guards and acolytes the moment they were announced in the city, so I made a faux job post, stating my will to hire servants to help my acolytes.
This was, of course, a ruse. Why did I need servants to draw water or clean plates when, I don't know, I could do that with a flick of my hand or a senior acolyte could do that for spell practice?
Most of my acolytes were incapable of using directly like I could, true, but they could use the tools I gave them, which, for some, included wands with preset spells.
Like cleaning.
Because like hell I was going to clean when I had servants, magical and mundane!
Where was I going with this?
Right, I was waiting for the two's description.
"The girl, who called herself Anna, is a fifteen year old from the slums. Brown hair, unhealthy yellow sickly pallor, five feet tall, and thin as a stick. The intent detection tool showed her as desperate, but it barely beat a few other intent and emotions like curiosity and fear."
"Fear?"
"Yes. When asked and told to speak honestly lest it hurt her chance at being hired, she responded that she feared she would be forced to offer her body once she is hired, either by sacrificing bits and pieces for magic rituals-"
"Which we don't do for several reasons," I grunted in irritation. Westrosi's idea of magic didn't apply to me, but it didn't stop people from comparing my magic to the native magic, which were the magic that required sacrifice to work.
My acolyte continued on as if I hadn't interrupted her. "-or by having to allow senior acolytes or yourself to bed her."
"... Not an unreasonable fear," I replied with a sigh.
While I had gone and made my Crystalline Guards successfully, the people within it still lived as they had before; their mindset and paradigm hadn't changed. One such mindset, one that never quite disappeared even in my past life, was that a woman might and could be forced to sell her body for one reason or another. Whether this was intentional on the woman's part or initiated against her will was irrelevant; the fact that this paradigm existed irked me because…
Well, if I was being honest, then I had to state clearly, at least to myself, that I didn't care because it wasn't something I had to deal with. I was not going to force an employee for sexual favor. I also wasn't going to be able to stop it from happening. I could punish it, but stop it?
I may as well try to stop human nature from working as intended, which was impossible.
What irked me was that such woman could rise to the top of organizations and become the new mistress of the very system that abused and used them when they were down low. After all, brothels were headed by former prostitutes more often than not, and they were just more open about using their bodies for services.
Ah, I digressed.
Perhaps I needed to be very strict about sexual relationships, especially unwanted ones, in workplace.
How should I go about doing this, though?
… I could wait for a stupid acolyte to make a mistake, but I didn't want fear to be the cause, because fear had a tendency to numb someone to itself over time. See enough people die and it becomes hard to care about dying, only how one lived before death came.
I could preempt this by holding a guild(?) wide meeting, laying down additional rules, but if I held such a meeting often enough, then my acolytes would feel too restricted.
I could make only men acolytes, but that didn't stop sexual relationships from happening after men rationalized homosexual activities.
Looking at you, Japanese Samurai and monks.
"... Make it clear that any sexual favors exchanged between employees will be met with heavy punishment," I decreed. "If any rape occurs, expect the rapist to be castrated and reduced to one of my Servitors."
I could make one. It might be hard, and I was certain to fail a certain number of times, but I had enough magic available on my side to turn a human into a magic-based automaton.
My acolyte froze and then shivered.
"Y-Yes, milord."
"Good. Make it also known that someone accuses someone else of rape not out of mistake but with the intentional intent to cause harm to the innocent party, then they will also suffer."
"I shall, milord."
Good, good.
"And if someone outside the guild rapes one of us, then report to me. If they are small enough, then I will burn them down to the ground. Everything but the royalty and the lord paramounts are small, and even then, I could make them pay dividends."
That got her to feel better.
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[NSFW] - Celestial Hymn (Celestial Forge/asoIaF SI)

Celestial Hymn
Chapter 28
-VB-
I blinked in surprise when, as soon as I arrived in my personal chamber in a manor I outright bought out outside the Red Keep, an omni-tool appeared over my left forearm after a violent connection between the Mundane Technology constellation and my Forge. A huge flurry of exchange happened prior to the omni-tool's appearance.
I stood there in silence and dumbfounded awe as I stared at the tool that could do everything.
So what did I do?
I fumbled for a full hour as I learned the settings, keys, and all the other works learning an unfamiliar electronic system takes.
"Nooooo….!!!" I realized in horror as I could literally plug in any other database into my newfangled omni-tool to make whatever I wanted, but all of my other database was in the Stormlands and far away from me.
Except for the database that came with the omni-tool.
I pulled up a screen to peruse through all of the tech now available to me, ready to be manufactured and put to use. My eyes glossed over everything from simple watering can to blueprints for entire dreadnoughts.
Dreadnoughts.
Not waterborne British battleships but spacefaring, kilometer-long continent blasters people called a spaceship.
…
Why was I subservient to a king? It would literally take me less than a year, thanks to the omni-tool and the Starbound workbench, to make myself a mass effect frigate.
…
Right. Just because I can make things on par with Tier 2 civilizations does not mean that I can rule over people. "No man rules alone" and all that. Besides, where was I going to get the fuel for Mass Effect frigates, never mind Element Zero? Even if I could conjure up enough fuel to get a frigate-class ship rolling, what would I do with it? Probably lay waste to the Deep North, that's what.
After that?
Everyone would come after me. It was one thing to have a magic corp at my beck and call but it was another to have a warship. I may have the loyalty of my magic corp but the rest of the world? Every would-be conquerors, power brokers, warmongers, and assassins would come down on my ass, and I would have to enact all sorts of measures and …
It was too much of a hassle. I'll just fortify my castle, thwart off what little attention I had so far, and then deal with the White Walkers as they came.
"Milord." I heard a thud.
My bubbles of rumination popped as someone knocked on my door.
"Who is it?" I was unfamiliar with the voice, but he sounded like one of my acolytes.
"I have a message from the Master of Coins."
Baelish?
I stood up and walked up to the door, feeling uneasy about meeting anyone Baelish might send.
I opened the door and -.
An unfamiliar person shot forward. His right arm lashed out towards my neck and -.
Bounced off.
He screamed as he backpedaled, his hand and arm mangled by my own improvised [Refraction] magic ward woven into my cape. I stood there, shocked as he ran off.
Did… someone just try to assassinate me so soon?
Picking up my staff, I stepped out onto the corridor and lashed out with my staff. The tip glowed blue and an arcane bolt shot out and slammed into the back of the fleeing assassin. The dark garbed man fell face forward with a cut off scream.
Soon, there was a stampede of feet as other guards quickly rushed to the sound of the scream.
I briskly jogged to the fallen assassin, ignoring the two guards supplied by the king who laid dead on the floor in pools of their blood, and quickly flipped him over.
I reared back in shock when the man's face was not the one I saw only moments prior.
"A Faceless Man…" I muttered in shock, because that was the only explanation for the sudden change of the assassin's face. I took a deep breath in and looked around. I didn't touch the knife the assassin dropped. The blade was tinged slightly in purple, and I didn't want to personally test if the blade was poisoned.
"Milord, are you alright?" one of the guards asked me.
"I am," I replied absentmindedly.
Why did the Faceless Man specifically say that he had a message from Baelish? Was it a distraction or did the egomaniac wanted me to know who killed him?
I knew that the Faceless Man "gifted" death but nothing in my memories told me of Faceless Man being dramatic about delivering their "gift" (Arya excluded).
Hell, was this person even a real Faceless Man or was it someone imitating them in Baelish's employ?
Was it Varys? He had reasons to want me dead.
I grimaced.
This was getting complicated and I didn't have enough clues for my questions.
"I think," I said out loud to the stunned guards around me. "I need to talk to the Master of Laws and the king. For now, all of you are dismissed and take the bodies with you. I will let my own acolytes guard me."
This was a lie. I was just going to put up temporary wards around the manor for my brief stay in the capital.
But I did need to see Robert and Renly about this.
I ignored the Forge acted up right then and grasped nothing again.
Okay, but seriously, time to see, at the very least, Renly. After all, as both my liege lord and the Master of Laws charged with the King's Peace and law in the city and beyond, an assassination attempt on me so soon after I entered the city would mar his reputation.
I was already fairly independent, but just how far can I push for more using this? I might even be able to guilt trip and bribe him at the same time, and once I had more of what I needed, I might be able to … do something.
I'm not sure yet. Already having a magic corps was already pushing things, even if I mitigated the possible fallout by pledging my and my corps' service to Robert.
I guessed that I will have to find out.
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