Chapter 263: Marked for Murder

The man who’d just been threatening my life knelt on the ground before the woman whose life I’d saved.

“Lady Magdalene Peersguard,” he said. “W-what can I do for you today, on this fine morning?”

I turned to her. “So that’s why you didn’t want to tell me your name.”

“You’ve been found out, I see,” she said, looking between me and the other man wearing Dark Plate—the iron titan.

“Yeah, I—wait, how did you know I wasn’t one of them?”

“I have interacted far too much with their family. Their mannerisms are familiar to me. It took a fraction of a second to know you were not only not one of them, but also that you had no idea they even existed. Though, I am curious as to how you acquired one of their signature suits of armor.”

I looked down at the iron titan, still kneeling in the sand with his head bowed. “I guess I’m a little bit curious about that, myself. Though, I’m not entirely interested in getting kidnapped and tortured in some dungeon all day in order to get the chance to find some answers about these people. Maybe you could enlighten me?”

She looked at me for a moment, then nodded. “Of course. The iron titans, as a group, are—”

“Lady Magdalene Peersguard.” He quickly stood to meet her eyes. “Our families have an alliance, need I remind you? The man before us has clearly stolen something extremely valuable from us, and you giving information to him would be quite the betrayal.”

“Alliance,” she spat, scoffing like him calling whatever relationship there was between them such a thing was ridiculous. But he held his gaze at her eyes, wordless, and after a moment, she turned to me. “Yes, I suppose so. I apologize, friend, but I will not be able to give you any of the information you want. However, I will not allow this man to slay you. You helped me, so consider this to be me paying back that debt.”

“Uh, cool, thanks,” I said. “So, should we just go ahead and kill this dude, or…?”

She chuckled. “Unfortunately, I will not be able to assist you in any physical conflict that you start. But if he attacks you, then I will not hesitate to destroy him.”

“Ah, alright,” I said, then turned to the guy. “So, wanna fight? Go ahead and take a swing at me, please.”

If I could see his face, I would’ve been able to appreciate what was probably a gloriously unamused expression, but unfortunately my comment was just met with a blank stare from an evil-looking helmet. Eventually, a voice came from it. “Continue strutting around in that armor, boy, and you will find a knife in your back someday.”

With that, he turned and started walking away.

Before he could fully exit, though, I noticed a small figure on the horizon, coming quickly closer from the direction of the city. I squinted to see…Oh, Sylvie was here, sprinting through the dunes. And trailing behind her were Erani and Ainash.

Magdalene was still standing in front of me, watching the iron titan guy walk away, neither of them taking much note of the approaching person considering there were people wandering all throughout the dunes looking for crystals.

But when Sylvie started getting close, she glanced over at her. “Is this someone you know?”

“Yeah, a friend,” I said. “Hey, now that we’re out of earshot of that guy, you wanna tell me what you know about him? He won’t know, so—”

“Unfortunately, I do not believe it would be wise to take such a risk for a stranger. I am thankful for our earlier talk, but there are powers at play you are not aware of that make angering them especially inconvenient for me.”

Sylvie stopped next to us, breathing heavily with her hands on her knees for a couple seconds before forcing herself upright.

“Hey,” she said, pausing to take another breath. “You’re, you, uh, you’re an iron titan, right?”

“...No,” Magdalene responded. “I am not. He is.”

She gestured over to the man still walking away, and Sylvie looked over, a visible frown on her face.

“Wait,” Sylvie said, “that’s not one of them. That’s…”

She stopped, then looked back at me.

“...Why are there two of you?”

“There aren’t two of me,” I replied. “He just also wears my armor.”

“Oohhhh,” she said, nodding. “I’ve always heard the titans wore a specific type of armor, but I’d never seen it. Didn’t realize it was your armor. Is that why you were always so secretive about it?”

“We can talk more later,” I said. “In the meantime—”

“Wait,” Sylvie interrupted, looking back to Magdalene. “So then, who are you? Also, why is the iron titan leaving? I thought they were, like, murder-crazy lunatics or whatever. Annor, are you secretly super badass and just fought him off? Did I miss your super badass fight?!”

“I’d like to think that I’m openly super badass,” I said. “But, uh, this is the woman who helped me get away from him. And don’t worry, she resolved the conflict peacefully, so you didn’t miss anything. So, uh, Sylvie, this is Magdalene, Magdalene, this is Sylvie.”

Sylvie frowned. “Magdalene…?”

“Magdalene Peersguard,” she said, holding out a hand to shake.

Sylvie did not shake her hand. Instead, she stared at Magdalene with wide eyes. She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again. “Y-you, uh…”

Erani and Ainash arrived, jogging up to us.

“Hey,” Erani said. “Where’s the enemy? You said you were getting kidnapped, or something?”

“No, it just got resolved,” I said. “Thanks for coming. But this is—”

“Let’s go ahead and get leaving,” Sylvie said, turning around and marching off. She grabbed my arm and started pulling me away.

I glanced back at Magdalene, hand still out and ready to shake. I couldn’t tell because her face was still covered by her helmet, but by the way her body slumped, it was like she’d expected Sylvie to react like that, just wished she didn’t.

“Uh, thanks,” I called back to her as I was pulled away by Sylvie, who grew faster with each step she took. I looked over to her and lowered my voice. “So, why are we running away so quickly? She seems like a pretty powerful ally to be snubbing her handshake and leaving without a second—”

“Yeah, a very, very powerful ally,” Sylvie said. “That’s the problem. One thing you learn when you’re around nobles is that great power brings with it great getting-killed-ness. Those people don’t get powerful by sucking dick for charity. They get it by chopping off peoples’ dicks. And then selling them. Or something. I’m too nervous; I lost my metaphor. Point is, powerful people kill a lot of innocents, and they also make a lot of enemies. Associating with them is not something you do lightly; it’s something you deliberate over quite a bit, and only do when you’re absolutely sure it won’t come back to bite your ass. Right now, we don’t know her motivations, her allies, her enemies, or what we have to gain. So you maybe bank a favor or two, keep your distance, and don’t get seen having a conversation with her that lasts more than three sentences.”

“Okay, you’ve gotta be exaggerating. She seems nice, I doubt it’s—”

“Oh, yeah, the noble—the person who’s been raised from birth to be as talented at lying, manipulation, and petty politics as possible—seems nice. Well we should definitely trust your gut on that one. It doesn’t matter what she seems like. She’s a noble. She’s plotting something.”

“You’ve gotta know how it sounds for you to be the one saying that.”

“I know exactly how I sound saying it. I sound correct. And I sound that way because I know what I’m talking about. I’m a horrible, manipulative scumbag, just like the rest of them. I just happen to be particularly entertaining when I do my manipulating, and that’s why you keep me around. But imagine if someone was like me, only not funny? Horrifying, I know.”

“That’s…” I frowned. “Actually, that does sound kind of horrifying.”

“Exactly my point. So we are getting out of here, and going to do some boring chores while also moving erratically and doubling back two or three times at every turn to ensure we aren’t being tailed.”

I glanced back. “Yeah, that iron titan guy seemed pretty sketchy. He probably did send someone after us.”

“No, you’re not getting me. Well, yeah, we’ve probably got one or two of their goons following us, but we’ve probably got a small army of Peersguard assassins following us. And following the iron titans’ guys, too. You need to understand, the dangerous part of that interaction wasn’t your little kidnapping, or whatever. It was the fact that a Peersguard had a pleasant conversation with you.”

“What is your problem with them? Have they done something horrible I don’t know about?”

She stopped, looking at me. “Imagine that you’re walking down the street in some random backwater village back in the Koinkar Kingdom, and randomly, King flaming Koinkar himself wanders down the street, walks up to you specifically, and invites you back to his palace for dinner for no discernable reason. Are you not absolutely terrified for your life?”

I nodded slowly. “I guess I see your point.”

“My family was never even remotely influential enough to even lick the Peersguards’ floors. If one of them is taking an interest in you, you’d better believe something’s gone terribly wrong.”

Erani leaned in. “Sorry, I’m having trouble keeping up with all of this. Annor, what even happened while you were gone?”

I took a breath. “Yeah, I need to fill you two in. Sylvie, maybe you’ll stop being so worried after I give you some context. But, uh, let’s get to a more private place first?”

It took quite a number of hours to get back to our inn. Not because it was that far away, but because we went the wrong direction on purpose over and over to avoid being tracked back—on Sylvie’s recommendation, of course.

But once we were back, and we’d triple-checked we were alone and safe, we sat down and I told the story of what’d happened. I didn’t mention how I knew Magdalene was gonna go attack those Sand Hive monsters because I’d seen her do it in a previous timeline, of course, but I talked about how I noticed that it looked like she was gonna fight them, how I told her not to, how the conversation went, and what’d happened from there on. And, while I explained the censored version to Sylvie, I silently transferred my memories to Ainash and let her transfer those to Erani, so they could get a fuller picture.

Sylvie listened quietly through the whole thing, hands folded in front of her mouth as she nodded me along. And once I was done, she took a breath like she was deep in thought.

“...Okay,” she said. “Have you considered she’s plotting to kill you?”

I rolled my eyes. “Did you hear nothing I said?”

“I heard all of it. She sure sounded like she was acting weird; I honestly can’t really get a read on her intentions based on your description. But anytime a politically powerful person like that is acting weird, it’s normally safe to assume they’re planning on murder. And I don’t know who else in that situation she would want to kill.”

“No way she wants to kill me. She helped me get away from that iron titan guy,” I said. “Which, you still do need to explain what you know about them.”

“To your first point: once again, we don’t know enough about them. Powerful people are complicated, and have quite a lot of people whose strings they’re pulling—and people who’re pulling their strings. Maybe she needed to look like she was helping you and is going to kill you later. Or maybe she wanted to glean some extra info off of you. No idea. And to your question: I honestly don’t know much about those guys, other than that they’re extremely violent. When I was younger, I’d sometimes hear my parents talking all hush-hush in another room about how some random person had gotten killed by their group, or whatever.”

“So you’re saying that between the woman who saved my life and the group of people notorious for committing murder, I should be worried about…?”

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about the iron titans. They’re, like, the opposite of nobles. It’s great! See, I barely know anything about them, and I can still tell generally what they’re up to. Sure, sure, murder and whatever, but it’s honest murder. They have some secret special armor that only they have access to, and now they see you wandering around wearing it, so obviously they wanna torture you until you tell them where you got it, and then kill you. Nice and simple. But with a noble, who knows what they’re after?”

“It sounded like the iron titans and the Peersguards were working together to some extent,” Erani cut in. “Would it be possible that may make things worse?”

“Nah,” Sylvie responded. “If anything, it’ll make things better. The more interested parties in your murder, the more infighting between them. If it was just one or the other, they’d do it however they’re gonna do it, then be done. But if they both want you dead, now they’ve gotta hold a meeting to decide on how to kill you, whether to capture you first, whose forces to send, who gets to torture you, all that stuff.”

“Sounds unpleasant,” I said.

She groaned. “Ugh, I know, right? I hate meetings.”

“A meeting which you have no evidence is happening, since you still have no actual proof the Peersguards want me dead. Honestly, my theory is that they have no idea who I am, and that Magdalene was just being a genuine person and helped me out because she saw me getting harassed by some jackass and I’d given her advice before. I’ll probably never speak to her again, and her family certainly won’t be a problem.”

She let out a breath. “Way to jinx it. Now you know they’ll become a problem. Anyway, those iron titans are probably basically pushovers. No need to worry about them.”

“Right, so you’re just doing this on purpose at this point.”

“I’m always doing everything on purpose. That’s how free will works, dumbass.”

I rubbed my face. “Alright.”

“Well,” Erani said, “with that conversation out of the way, it is getting late. And, as much as this whole situation is making me almost want to abandon the tournament and start focusing on whatever noble shenanigans are going on, we do need to wake up early for the second challenge of the elimination round. This time it was just gathering crystals, but I imagine the next one won’t be as simple as picking up rocks.”

I nodded. “Yeah. We need to talk more about this, but for now I guess we need to make sure we don’t have to compete while sleep-deprived. You think we need to worry about middle-of-the-night assassins, or anything?”

Sylvie shrugged. “It’s pretty soon for them to make an attempt already. I give it a fifty-fifty shot.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence. Let’s just keep our eyes and ears open. Maybe sleep in shifts? I can take first watch.”

Erani nodded and went to lay down as Ainash curled up on the floor, still somehow comfortable with resting on the hardwood surface. I glanced around and found a corner that gave me view of the window that led outside and the door leading into our room, sitting down there.

Sylvie was left in the middle of the room, glancing around at us. “Wow. You have a whole protocol already set up for this type of thing, huh? Get your lives threatened often?”

“You couldn’t imagine,” I said, leaning by head back and trying to find a comfortable position to spend the next couple of hours. Tomorrow would be a big day. Well, technically, the whole next week would be full of big days. But tomorrow would be one of them.

AN: Sorry about the delayed chapter, everyone! Just a combination of some unfortunate assignments for school all lining up to be around the same time (I forgot about a presentation until literally the day before I was supposed to present, when my professor emailed me asking for the powerpoint I'd be using, whoops) plus Easter stuff making me busy with family. Finals season is beginning to rear its ugly head, but hopefully it won't interrupt my ability to upload too badly. Anyway, hope you all enjoyed! :)