Chương 103: Chapter 98

Talena It's pretty incredible how quickly people move on from a display like that. It was like the Corvian Drast incident was nothing more than a footnote, even though it had the potential of being quite dangerous for me. Maybe people are just used to strange things happening around me. I don't feel like that can be specific to me, though. Maybe I'm overthinking it. The four additional Ciphers were much harder to ignore. I couldn't help but look over at them, but I tried very hard not to look surprised.

Apparently I was the only one concerned about it. The room had already moved on, conversations resuming with the relief of people who had collectively decided that what they had just witnessed was extraordinary but contained, and that the appropriate response was to pretend composure they did not entirely feel. I let the room do that. I was still doing arithmetic. I raised one hand slightly, the gesture small enough to look like nothing in particular, and kept my eyes forward as I spoke out of the side of my mouth.

"When were you going to tell me?" The response came from the space just to my right and behind. An imperceptible shrug, so small I caught it only in my peripheral vision, the barest shift of a shoulder, controlled and deliberate even in its casualness. He was not going to tell me. I kept my expression composed.

"Who are they?" I asked. I was not entirely sure what I was asking. I was also not entirely sure I had a better way to ask it.

"And how did you find people with your exact same build?"

"You assume a lot by that statement." The voice through the mask carried with the same robotic tones I was so familiar with that it was hard to detect any inflection. But I did hear it, and it sounded mildly amused. I looked at the nearest one across the room. The similarities were baffling, but it truly was the same armor, mask, and total stillness. Real, though, in a way that transitioned from dreams to reality. Were there really four different Ciphers? If so, were they twins? Could I have all of them?

Certainly that was unconventional, especially for a princess when magic bloodlines were so important. But still. I am a woman of great appetites. I felt my pulse quicken and my face flush. Damn him for making me feel this way when he was not even trying. I looked for something to say.

"Which one is the real you? If things go wrong, I want to make sure I come to you and not someone else." A pause.

"Who says they're all not me? Or even none of them." I couldn't help myself. This time I actually turned.

"That doesn't make any sense. If you're not you, who are you?"

"That's the beauty of the question. It doesn't really matter who I am. It has zero relevance to my ability to keep you safe. It doesn't have to make sense to you." I considered that for a moment. That was not an answer I loved, but probably as good as I was going to get from my Stoic Protector. That was fine. I'll make him talk all about it when I finally seduce him. He thinks he's getting away from me. He is so wrong. With a small smirk to myself, I turned back to face the hall.

The room did not know what it was sharing space with. Four of them, positioned at every significant angle, having been there probably since before I arrived. Though I was simply guessing based on context rather than any actual knowledge of what was going on. I had to wonder what sort of expression he was casting. Were they true Mimics, which only the highest tier three-core practitioners could cast, a combination of Sanatio, two different subtypes of elemental and structural Arcanum, and even Aura?

All of them combined to make what were essentially human clones. It was an impossible piece of magic. I knew two other people who could actually pull it off. If Cipher could run four Mimics and still be cognizant enough to actually function, the thought was both deeply reassuring and terrifying, which was a combination I was becoming accustomed to in relation to Cipher generally. Further discussion was interrupted by the sound I had been waiting for since the evening began.

The announcement carried across the hall with the weight of something that did not need volume to command attention.

"His Royal Majesty, King Cassian Aurion, and Her Royal Majesty, Queen Marcelline Aurion of the Dominion of Vera." The room adjusted instantly, not the gradual recalibration that had followed my entrance or the reactive shift that had followed Corvian's spectacle. The king and the queen were here and the effect was immediate, complete reorientation of a space that had been waiting for its actual center of gravity to arrive.

My father entered with an authority lacking performance that I had seen at countless other official functions. Most people in power were performative and did not understand the approach of real authority, a quality that lesser men could not even begin to comprehend, let alone mimic. He was tall, silver-edged at the temples, carrying the quality of composed attention that my tutors had spent years trying to develop in me and that he had apparently been born with.

My mother moved beside him with the quiet gravitational pull she always carried, the kind that was easy to underestimate until you were standing in a room with her and understood, in a way you could not articulate, that she was the reason the room felt the way it did. A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. Behind them, my elder brother. I looked at him in surprise. He never came to these things.

"Prince Rian Aurion, Commander of the Royal Vanguard." Rian was everything the title suggested and considerably more than it showed publicly. He was twenty-five, built with the kind of physical authority that came from genuine capability and a relentless work ethic. He had the same silver-edged coloring that ran through the Aurion line and eyes that were, if anything, sharper than my father's.

He moved with easy confidence and extreme capability, without announcement and without the performance of readiness that less accomplished people used as a substitute for the real thing. He was one of the top Arcanum and Sanatio practitioners of his generation, which was not something most people knew because Rian avoided speaking about his capability and actively discouraged others from discussing it on his behalf.

He had taken an Arcane core first, which was unusual, most practitioners went for the faster developmental path, but Rian had wanted the extra purification time, which told you everything you needed to know about how he thought. He planned in decades. He built things to last. He did not worry about the instant boost of vitality an Aura core would give or the lifespan it provided.

He was also, in practical terms, the royal family's version of what Aiden Vanta was in the military network, the person who actually made things work. And behind Rian.

"Princess Cyan Aurion of the Dominion of Vera." My younger sister entered with the energy of someone who had been formally composed for the entire journey and had run completely out of it approximately forty-five minutes ago. She was thirteen, bright-eyed, and wearing something that her attendants had clearly spent considerable effort arguing her out of and had clearly lost. The dress was short. Emphatically short.

Fitted through the waist in a way that was technically appropriate for someone her age and personally chaotic in terms of the occasion. Her hair was slightly wrong in the way of someone who had fixed it twice and gotten bored the second time. She looked extraordinary and completely unconcerned about it, which was very much Cyan. Her gaze swept the hall with the unfiltered assessment of someone who had not yet learned to soften their observations into something more socially manageable.

It landed on the nearest Cipher. It stayed there for approximately three seconds. Then it landed on me. I gave her the very small, very controlled look that meant later. She gave me the look that meant she was already composing questions. My father reached the dais and turned to face the hall. The room had already settled into the quality of attention that a king commanded through presence alone. Not silence exactly, a focused quiet that left room for what was about to be said. He did not preamble.

My father had never seen the point of preambles.

"The Five Seat Martial Tournament is among the oldest continuous traditions in the Dominion of Vera and among the most significant in the Upper Planes." His voice carried without effort, the projection of someone who had delivered addresses in spaces ten times this size and understood the difference between filling a room and commanding it.

"It exists not to celebrate strength for its own sake, but to develop it. To test it. To understand what the next generation of the Dominion and its allies is capable of, and to ensure that capability is equal to what the next generation will be asked to face." He paused.

"What that generation will be asked to face is not theoretical. It is current. It is present. And it is the reason this tournament matters more this cycle than it has in recent memory." The room was very still.

"The primary matches of the Five Seat Martial Tournament will begin tomorrow morning. The Ascendant Circle will be open to sanctioned competition from dawn. The formal bracket has been confirmed and distributed. The rules of engagement are established and will be enforced without exception."

He looked across the assembled room, the competitors, the delegations, the political representatives, the observers, all of them gathered in a hall that had been watching these proceedings for longer than most of the Dominions represented in it had existed.

"Compete with honor," he said simply.

"The Dominion of Vera is watching. Your parents, your teachers, your masters, your kings and their queens are all watching. So is everything beyond it. Fight until your last breath. Win with prowess, lose with dignity." He sat. The applause that followed was not the enthusiastic wave of a crowd performing appreciation. It was the measured response of people who had just been reminded, without being told directly, that the world outside this hall was moving in a direction that made what happened inside it matter.

My mother leaned slightly toward my father and said something I could not hear from the dais. He responded without looking at her, which meant he agreed. Then it was my mother's turn. She would officially open the Ascendant Ball.

"Friends, participants, ladies and gentlemen, royalty, noble and commoner alike, we welcome you to our summer estate at Mirefall. I declare now officially, as I have so many times before, the opening of tonight's Gala. Please enjoy the food, the drink, and the dance." More applause, more music. The lights dropped as the orchestra began to play, and servants started to move through the guests with drinks and food.

Rian had taken a position to the right of the throne arrangement, standing rather than sitting, his attention already moving through the room with the patient systematic quality of someone conducting an assessment he had started before he arrived and would not finish until he left. His gaze found the nearest Cipher. It stayed there for a moment. Then it found me. I gave him the same look I had given Cyan. His response was considerably more controlled than hers had been.

A single fractional adjustment of expression that I had known since childhood meant he had filed the thing and would be asking about it at the first available opportunity. Cyan had already migrated approximately three steps closer to the nearest Cipher than she had been when the announcement ended.

"Cyan," I said quietly. She stopped.

"Later," I said. She turned back to the dais with the expression of someone accepting a temporary ruling under formal protest. Behind me, Cipher stood exactly where he had always been standing. There was a loud boom, almost like a shock spell or a concussive burst that broke the sound barrier. Loud enough that people put their hands over their ears. A single solitary figure walked through the side doors of the main opulent entrance. The giant ceremonial doors that were usually kept closed.

The man looked olive-skinned, wearing a crisp dark suit with white lapels, glasses, and a very funny-looking mustache. Seriously, who wore a mustache like that? He cleared his throat. Everyone was staring at him. He gave a bow.