"No man is truly without prejudice, regardless of how noble they might be, for true perfection is beyond the reach of mortal hands." - Attributed to Pope Theodin I of the Vitalis Theocracy.

"If I may be so bold to ask, Lady Ambervale, what prompted you to cooperate so happily with my plan?" Guilbert asked from atop his mount next to Cal - she had accepted his offer of a horse to ride to be polite, and was in no hurry anyway. "I would have thought these troubles of ours were but trivial matters for someone of your station."

"We just finished a four-decade long civil war back home." Cal explained. "I do not look favorably on people who would disturb the peace of so many just for such an inane reason as those lunatics."

"And you can call it a personal bias too." She added. "I've never been fond of useless fops born to power who just spent their lives squandering the riches they were born with, or worse, made life miserable for those underneath them just because they can. I spent decades personally purging out that sort of scum back home in the empire."

When one considered that the vast majority of such old-blood nobles sided with the usurper during the civil war back in the Empire, that was a boast Cal really could back, since the majority of those nobles - the usurper and his extended family included - met their grisly and painful ends by her very hands. To say that the current crop of officials and titled nobles in the empire were mostly newly raised would not be wrong, since so few of the olds lines - mostly because some of them had descendants with enough decency and loyalty to not side of the usurper - survived the civil war itself, and the purge that followed.

“I… could relate to that somewhat.” Guilbert admitted with some trepidation. “There are many among my ilk I considered better fit as a night soil carrier than a lord who reigned over thousands of people.”

“The thing is, when your country is at peace, politics and regulations often take precedence, and those with old blood and money hold most of that power in their hands, am I right?” Cal interceded. “We had the same issues in the Empire before, but then the Civil War broke out, and as bad as that was overall, at least it gave us a proper excuse and cause to eradicate all those bloodsuckers growing fat on the nation’s bounty. Not that I would wish a civil war on anyone, those were truly horrible times.”

“I appreciate the concern. My own faction amongst the nobility had campaigned for reform as well, as we hoped we could affect change from within without it coming to blows.” Guilbert explained with a sad tone. “Yet, as you had said, power mostly lay with those of old blood and old money, and they clutched to it like a mother clutching her babe.”

“I only hope your people came up with a better result than mine, in the end.”

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Surprisingly - or rather, unsurprisingly - the army’s march into the territory of baron de Burgess went pretty much unimpeded. When the sparse, poorly equipped excuse of the border guard saw the marching army, they stood neatly aside without a word and just let them pass - the one fool that tried to run to inform the garrison deeper in the territory neatly shot down by Guilbert himself with one arrow -, and behaved themselves well enough that Guilbert felt safe to leave only twenty of his own men to guard the prisoners for the time being.

The villages the army marched past in their course towards the Baron’s castle were universally quite destitute, villagers often thin and malnourished, and what they could discern from the few that spoke to the soldiers were that the villages had to make do with the bare minimums, the majority of their harvests taken as tax which often left them with barely enough to live on. Many of the soldiers took pity at the sight of the malnourished children, and with Guilbert’s approval, shared a portion of their rations with the villagers to their tearful thanks.

If the baron had doubts about his borderline treasonous plans before, those doubts had gone with the wind, as anger and disgust threatened to overwhelm him as he saw just how his neighbor treated his own people.

They actually made good time, and were pretty much unchallenged until they reached de Burgess’s castle itself - what few bands of soldiers they ran into were more like bands of thugs, who scattered or surrendered on sight of the army that greatly outnumbered them. The castle was more of an old fort, with a wooden palisade that served as its wall, and to Cal’s best guess he had maybe eighty thugs that served as soldiers within. They panicked at the sight of the incoming army, and their haphazardly fired barrage of arrows fell embarrassingly short of the army itself.

“We might have to take a couple days in order to siege them down. I do not want too many lives sacrificed just to scrape some dogshit off my boots.” Said Guilbert after he surveyed the palisade from his position in the middle of his army. The palisade that surrounded the baron’s manse within was old, but solidly built, and when their lack of siege equipment or siege mages were considered, would take a while to tackle if he did not want to sacrifice too many lives.

“If the gates were open, how confident are you in taking the place to your satisfaction?” Cal asked in response.

“If the gates were open? One hour and those thugs inside will be finished.” Guilbert answered with a questioning look.

“I see.” Cal said as she lightly leapt off her horse and landed on her feet. “Wait here for a bit, you’ll not be able to miss the signal to charge so have them troops ready to go.”

Guilbert watched half in wonderment as the half-elven woman casually walked towards the gate in the palisade, and how her halberd deftly swatted away any arrows that actually got aimed close enough to her - which were not that many, testament to the poor quality of training de Burgess’s troops had. It did not take her long before she stood before the gate, too close for the archers stationed atop the palisade to shoot at her.

Cal took a deep breath, and relaxed as she felt her magical energies coursed throughout her body. She flipped her halberd in her grip so its hammerhead faced down, and her eyes scanned the solid wooden gates, kept a note on her mind where the bar that barred the gate laid, pulled her weapon back, then swung at the spot with a violent motion of her arms. A loud crack echoed in the stunned silence that followed, and she drew her weapon back, satisfied at the results. The bar did not quite break apart, but was very close to, and after several kicks - enhanced thoroughly with her magic - at the right spot, the gates gave up and slowly swung open.

Guilbert’s army did not miss that obvious signal, and charged forward at best speed with their shields held high. A few of the thuggish soldiers within the palisade climbed down from their perch at the top of the walls in an attempt to close the gates, but Cal just nonchalantly batted or kicked those away without a care, and much like Guilbert promised, there was no more fighting not ten minutes after his soldiers stormed the fort.

Cal and Guilbert himself - followed by twenty of his best soldiers - were the ones to breach the locked doors of the manse in the middle of the old fortifications. To her pleased surprise, Cal found herself greeted by some ten or so cultists that attacked her on sight. She left those alive and merely disabled them - likely permanently in many cases - to leave more witnesses and evidence for Guilbert to use as needed.

De Burgess himself, they found sequestered in his room. The man had packed his valuables in many chests and sacks - far too many valuables and jewelry for a noble who lived in such poor lands - and had clearly been intent on making his escape, but was not given the chance to. The overweight, sweaty noble aimed a crossbow at Cal and Guilbert as they literally kicked the door open with hands that trembled much like pudding would.

“Statham! I should have known this would be the work of a low-life cretin like you!” Raved the obese noble. “And you even brought more of your vile subhuman ilk with you in my noble presence! Begone to Hell with you mixlings!”

De Burgess pulled the trigger on his crossbow, aimed at Guilbert, but Cal intercepted the bolt before Guilbert could bring his shield up, as she allowed the bolt to puncture through her left arm. She brought her arm over by her face, bolt still attached, and tentatively sniffed at the head of the bolt, before she gave it a small lick, to the utterly befuddled look of Guilbert and the mounting horror on De Burgess’s face.

“Hmm… Itch and numbness considered, I’d say this is likely a mix of Nightshade and Hemlock, probably cut with some Red Widow venom…” Cal mentioned nonchalantly with a smack of her lips, her magic already at work to quarantine and expel the poison that entered her bloodstream and render it harmless. “Tell me, my dear Baron, with all this, would it count as Grave Insult, Assault, and Attempted Murder of a foreign dignitary under your laws?”

“Uh. That would be correct, Grand Marshall Ambervale.” Guilbert answered after he snapped out of his befuddlement. “And considering his low rank and grave offense committed to a foreign dignitary of esteemed position, I doubt anyone would bat an eye were you to exact retribution for his actions.” He added, now with an understanding grin.

To do things this way would throw a good bit of the responsibility to Cal - and to the Al-Shan Empire behind her -, but the way she saw it, if Xain and Halmout wanted to saddle her with a sky-high empty title, they knew exactly what they’re in for anyway, and so shouldn’t mind cleaning up the mess she left behind - not that it would be much of one with such a cut-and-clean witnessed case.

When Cal and Guilbert left de Burgess’s room five minutes later and the latter ordered some soldiers to have the valuables in the room collected and cleaned up, Cal had a satisfied look on her face and whistled a merry tune, while Guilbert looked pale and occasionally gave a wary look at the woman that walked beside him.

The guards they had left outside the room knew better than to ask about the inhuman wails that echoed throughout the manse for the past few minutes.