A white ring of swirling energy opened outside of Saint June and three men stepped out.One of the men looked around in disdain with a cloth over his mouth to block out the dust that was kicked up by an errant gust of wind.“Pu’v, why did we arrive outside of the walls?” Lord Vik’t asked in an accusatory tone.A shorter man scuttled over and knelt, “I am unsure my Lord, my spell should have brought us well inside the walls and near the government residence going by the information we collected.”“Ugh, useless,” Lord Vik’t said, shoving the man aside and heading toward the gate in the distance. His guard and Pu’v the teleporter expert followed in his wake.He would have replaced Pu’v with someone more competent but he was his sister's kid and keeping him around ensured that his sister would owe him a favor.Their arrival had not gone unnoticed and the large gate slammed shut at their approach with hard-looking men watching them from the top of the wall. Lord Vik’t had confidence that i

“Any idea who or what it was?” Martin asked as he stared at the mangled corpse on the coroner's table.Martin was thankful the city had power again, otherwise, the smell would have been unbearable.Kurt shrugged, “your guess is as good as mine,” the man answered noncommittally.Martin suppressed the urge to throttle the man. He had become more a detriment than an asset since Martin took office.“Who got the kill message?” Martin asked, keeping the frustration from coloring his question.“One of the guards, why?”“Go find out who it was and see what the message told them.”“Fine, but I don’t see the point. It's pretty obvious who sent them,” Kurt grumbled.“Just do your job, Sheriff.”With one last irritated huff, Kurt left the room. After he was gone Martin turned toward the coroner, “was he always like this?”Before answering the coroner made sure to check that Kurt was long gone.“Far as I can tell, the man has always been an ass. I never really worked with him but others I knew sai

Hey, Fiona, I think we may have a problem,” I said as I looked at the remote viewing orb.It wasn’t quite clear as we were still a ways off from the coast and the orb wasn’t designed to see that far away. What I had noticed was a haze of dark smoke. I may have missed it if I hadn’t been watching the orb out of boredom and saw a slightly thicker clump of smoke.“What is it?” Fiona asked as she hurried into the room.“Smoke, I’m going to cloak the fortress. Can you fly ahead and get an idea of what we are flying into?”She looked worried about the possibility that the city and most likely Martin may be in trouble and nodded.It didn’t take her long to fly off and return, being much faster than the fortress.“City is mostly intact. It seems a few attacks made it through before the shield got raised. The smoke is coming from the walled-in farming area to the east. There seems to be an army camped out near the remains. They also appear to have mobile mana cannons and are occasionally firin

It took a week but the enemy eventually pulled back all of their forces from within the forest. They couldn’t afford to leave even spotters inside the draining field. At least not if they wanted to keep them alive. Even stealth-based classes were severely limited by the teleportation scrambler as it prevented skills like what Martin told me that catkin was capable of using.The only reason Fiona was immune to this effect was due to her being spiritual. I had thought of coming up with a way to block spiritual entry but I liked having a way in again if shit hit the fan a second time. I knew it was only a matter of time until the Guild showed their face again. Now that the Guild knew we had a way to disable their main advantage they would be furiously trying to figure out how we did it. I suspected more infiltrators would be hired.Martin had agreed with my assessment and was pushing hard on the two they captured to try and turn them to our side. I still didn’t like the idea of letting t

The party lasted way too long and by the end, my nerves were fried but Fiona thanked me for sticking it out. I knew it was more about Martin than it was about me but still, I hated politics.The ship wasn’t launched that evening, much to the disappointment of everyone present. They could watch the launch in the morning after I got some sleep. Nobody could be within the compound walls while I was initiating the systems anyway, there was a slight possibility the automated defenses would determine they were hostile. It was unlikely but I didn’t want to risk it on a simple systems test.***The morning was a frantic burst of activity as the construction crew ran around making sure everything was secured. They would be aboard for the shakedown and many of them were nervous.“Boss, it looks like everything is good to go on our end,” Timothy said as he entered the command room.“Alright, tell your men to strap themselves in the flight chairs and we’ll get this show on the road.”The ship cou