By the time the six of them reached the Palace, everything was ready. Serenity’s shield spell was active and everyone was up to speed on the plan. Serenity’s partial advance to Tier Eight changed the plan only a little; they’d already been counting on his over-Tier strength and sturdiness.

Lykandeon was still asleep on the couch. Serenity had checked every minute or so; he noticed that his checks became more common as they got closer and closer to the deity. It was pure nervousness; he didn’t need to check that often but he didn’t see any reason to stop himself.

Serenity hadn’t brought up the possibility of using Death magic on Lykandeon. It would either work really, really well or it would be useless; it all depended on how the deity had reacted to the ritual. The hour and some change since the ritual ended was certainly enough time for whatever changes were going to happen to be well underway.

None of them quite believed that a single hit would be enough to take out Lykandeon, even with a manablade soul weapon. That was especially true if Lykandeon was maintaining a shield, which he probably was; Serenity planned to take the shield out with his ax and strike almost immediately with his manablade. With luck, it would work and there would be no further problems. Of course, they had to get there without an alarm being raised first.

Ekari led the way through the Palace; dressed in the Priest-Inspector’s clothing, she looked like she belonged. Everyone else wore the black coats; chances are no one would pay too much attention, even with Ita present They hadn’t managed to catch up with Rourke, but it should still work as long as they were fast.

The first sign of trouble came, exactly as expected, when they got to the hallway leading to Lykandeon’s room. There were a pair of guards stationed at the entrance.

“Are you lost?” One of the guards started. “This isn’t the way to-”

No one would ever know where it wasn’t the way to; instead, Sillon’s knife lodged itself squarely in his throat. It was a good throw, even against a target with no idea it was coming. Without Blaze present, it was also fatal.

The second guard started to yell but didn’t manage more than a squawk before Kerr smashed him in the head with the butt of her sword. She’d started moving even before Sillon did, but she’d chosen to go for the easier melee strike and it took a little longer. Serenity doubted that guard would survive, either; while it was probably technically nonlethal, he’d need medical attention quickly as well if the dent in his skull was anything to judge by.

This was a perfect example of someone who was just doing their job who got unlucky. The odds of anyone assaulting Lykandeon in his Palace were slim; on the other hand, that was why there were guards. These two seemed to be more ceremonial than real, which made sense if you didn’t actually expect to be attacked.

Serenity felt a little bad for them, but not too bad. “Rissa, can you take a look?”

He didn’t have to say more than that. Rissa would see if she could save their lives; if she could, great, but Serenity didn’t expect too much. He wouldn’t have set Rissa there if he hadn’t needed Sillon there to watch the entrance and prevent anyone from sounding the alarm. They’d come in from the side that was supposedly less public, but there simply weren’t enough of them to replace all of the guards with fakes so Sillon would have to do his best once he hid the bodies.

The lack of an alarm meant that they could move on to the next phase of the plan. Ekari shed her dark robes, revealing the “Priestess’s attire” worn by those Lykandeon summoned. Kerr did the same and somehow managed to look fiercely proud while Ekari looked a bit shame-faced.

Sadly, this wasn’t even the craziest part of the plan.

Kerr led the way down the hall while everyone other than the two ladies dressed as priestesses of the night stayed out of sight. Serenity couldn’t hear anything until Ita nodded and hopped towards the entrance. “Kerr says both guards are down and quiet. She and Ekari are stealing the uniforms.”

Serenity nodded. They’d “guard the door” and prevent surprise reinforcements while Serenity fought Lykandeon, just like Sillon was going to do at the other guard station. In many ways, they were a worse replacement than the lone Sillon because he was male and they were female while all of the guards were male, but there weren’t any other options without Blaze.

He headed down the hallway followed by Ita and Sillon; Sillon’s job was going to be to drag the bodies, alive or dead, back to Rissa then keep everything quiet. With luck, no one else would come by.

When they reached the room, Ekari opened the doors. They weren’t locked and they opened silently. As the vision of Aeon’s core had shown, Lykandeon lay asleep on the couch.

Serenity examined the room. He didn’t see the sort of protective warding he’d more than half expected, but that wasn’t any reason to change the plan at this point. At its worst, it would be unnecessary, but if it kept Lykandeon from waking up early it was worthwhile. A ward of some sort seemed all too likely since Serenity knew Lykandeon used rituals. While wards and rituals weren’t the same, they were related.

Serenity nodded and Ita tossed half of a clay token into the room. It landed next to Lykandeon; he didn’t stir. That meant that whatever ward was there didn’t react, if there was one at all. It also meant that they now had a way through the ward, whether it was protective or simply an alarm. Of course, that assumed there was a ward, but it was always safer to be prepared.

The only remaining ward of concern would be one laid on the entire room to detect unauthorized people. Those were much more difficult to defeat than perimeter wards but also much more difficult to create, so Serenity didn’t expect one.

Ita set her left hand on Serenity’s shoulder. For a moment, Serenity was distracted by the question of whether “paw” or “hand” was really the better translation; Sterath used the same word for upper/fore feet as they did for their own hands, which would imply “paw”, but the use of “hand” was probably more accurate in English since they were tool users.

Serenity knew that was simply his brain trying to distract him in a stressful situation, so he focused on Lykandeon and drew his weapons. He wouldn’t trigger the manablade until he was in the room; it was simply too dangerous. “I’m ready.”

Serenity vanished from his position in the hall and reappeared standing over the broken coin, exchanged with an equivalent volume of air to reduce the noise. Ita had always done that to some extent, but she’d been overjoyed when Serenity was able to explain why it mattered.

Lykandeon was still asleep. Good.

Serenity triggered his manablade and Lykandeon’s eyes blinked open sleepily. It was probably the mana usage; while it was slight, he was very close to Lykandeon and that could be enough to wake a mage. With no more time to waste, Serenity relaxed his hold on his aura. That would definitely have awakened the deity. He was unable to completely hide his Incarnate of Death from his aura now, but that would probably be useful for this.

Serenity struck out with his left hand. His ax slammed into solidity a few inches above Lykandeon’s chest but broke through it then stopped completely after barely more than nicking him. No surprise there; the ax wasn’t designed for people of whatever Tier Lykandeon was. Serenity couldn’t judge that accurately right now. It felt quite a bit lower than he’d assumed before the ritual, but that could easily have been because he’d gained in Tier and Lykandeon was damaged.

Serenity’s right hand stabbed the manablade into Lykandeon’s now-unprotected chest. He’d probably hit the heart, but far more importantly he’d definitely badly injured a lung. A heart could be deadly quickly; a lung would just slow Lykandeon down.

There was no “just” about being slowed down when you were already hurting.

As much as he wanted to go for an instant kill, the odds were against it working. Almost anyone above Tier Six or so would have some way of countering an instant-death attack; Serenity had one, after all. Surprise attacks were simply too deadly otherwise, so like shields, the Voice tended to provide Skills to protect against a single deadly attack. They came later than shields for mages; even then, nonmage combat specialists got them first. Since Lykandeon appeared to be a mage, it was possible he didn’t have a Skill for it yet. Serenity didn’t want to bet on it.

Serenity felt a pull. Teleportation? It came from the sword, but not his own body. Serenity had only a moment to choose; he’d already seen Lykandeon teleport once that night so he decided not to resist it.

Lykandeon disappeared and reappeared across the room. Serenity’s manablade was still lodged in his chest.

Serenity grinned. This was useful; Lykandeon couldn’t get away from him as long as he was literally in his chest. It was too bad that he didn’t have any good damaging Skills to cast through the sword; that was clearly a deficiency he needed to correct.

Serenity settled on Death Field. His aura overlapped three times here and one of them was inside Lykandeon’s chest. Death Field should be quite nasty right now unless Lykandeon had come up with a way to counter the Death Affinity.

Lykandeon grunted, then reached up and pulled Serenity ‘s Crystal Hilt Manablade out of his chest, cutting himself more in the process. He tossed it away.

Serenity that it had done some real damage. Lykandeon bled freely for only a moment, but the blood continued to drip. More importantly, his hand seemed withered. Serenity couldn’t tell what the condition of his chest was, since the rip in Lykandeon’s robe didn’t show much, but if his hand withered after only momentary contact he had to be hurt.

The Death Fields drained Serenity’s mana rapidly. He didn’t want to drop them, but he also didn’t want to run out of mana. There was no infinite source here.

Serenity charged towards Lykandeon; he blipped to another corner of the room but Serenity was able to reach his real goal and pick up the manablade.

A beam of golden light lanced out from Lykandeon and hit Serenity's shield squarely. There was a slight greenish tinge to it, but unlike the energy Serenity had seen earlier in the day the gold dominated instead of the green.

It didn’t penetrate but it did mean that the cost of holding the shield increased sharply. Strangely, there was not anywhere near enough pressure to actually go through the shield; Serenity had expected a much nastier attack.

“What are you doing? Why did you attack me?” Lykandeon sounded completely incredulous. “This is my home, it’s rude to attack me here!”

Serenity blinked, surprised. Okay, that wasn’t the reason he’d expected Lykandeon to be surprised. He’d expected Lykandeon to be surprised because he thought Serenity was under his control.

“I mean, stop! You’re not supposed to attack me! I’m helping you! You like me, we work together!” Lykandeon sounded a little desperate, but Serenity didn’t actually feel anything attacking him mentally this time, unlike the past times when he’d attended an audience with Lykandeon. Perhaps the shield was blocking whatever Lykandeon was doing? He hadn’t put anything in there to block mental attacks at all.

Unless … what if the attack needed a carrier? In the past, the entire room had a sort of a green haze when Serenity entered that was completely missing right now. Could Lykandeon’s glowing attack be intended as the replacement for the green haze? Was that why it was so weak?