"Vex better be grateful for this," Helix muttered.

He didn't mean it, of course. At this point, he was fighting for far more than just his brother. It had taken him time to see that Vex had been right all along, but he'd figured it out eventually.

He owed it to his team the most; Larok in particular, the one member of his team that was with him today.

Helix hadn't known Larok particularly well when he'd first started talking to the man; Larok had just had the misfortune of being nearby when Helix learned that Vex had left. Lacking any particular ability to hold back, Helix's first reaction to the news had been to turn to the nearest available figure — some commoner orc — drag him to the closest pub, and then spill every thought he had about his younger brother to the stranger.

It was a miracle that Larok had listened to him at all.

But he had. Larok paid attention to every word he said, and he'd done so genuinely, unlike all the servants that Helix spoke to that only listened to him because they were obligated to. Or because they were being paid to do so. It was the first time Helix had felt like someone was actually taking him seriously.

And then he'd looked Helix in the eye and told him he was wrong.

He'd been furious at first, of course. He'd been the scion of their House until Vex had come along and shown his particular knack for magic, and now that his younger brother had left, he was once again the heir — but his place in his own family had never felt so precarious. He was uncertain, thrown off.

He'd been happy and proud of Vex, and then his younger brother threw it all away for what Helix had seen as nothing more than a phase. And now this stranger was looking him in the eye and telling him that his brother had been right to do so?

"Who the fuck do you think you are?" Helix had asked. The fireball that lit up in his hand gave him a dangerous look, he knew. He'd never been able to control his use of magic particularly well. He spent mana like water.

"No one." Larok hadn't seemed even slightly perturbed. He'd even taken a sip of his drink, looking Helix in the eye. "Hurts, doesn't it? That a nobody like me disagrees."

There had been a certain self-loathing bitterness in his voice that had cut straight through Helix's anger. He'd paused, staring at Larok, the fireball flickering out in his hand; the rest of the tavern had paused to stare at them, and a glare from him sent them all back to looking at their drinks and gossiping with one another.

He wasn't interested in all of that. He was interested in Larok, and whatever it was that made the man so brave.

And foolish, arguably.

He'd invited the man to his house that night, and to his surprise, Larok had accepted.

Without the barrier of nobility and commoner between them, they'd had a surprising amount of things in common. They liked the same books, seen the same plays; Larok even knew a little bit about magic, even though his own class was related to administration and basic clerk duties.

He'd elaborated more on his point of view, too. Helix had never told him the House secret, of course; he'd just explained that Vex left to protect his brother, and all his opinions about the divide between the nobles and the commoners.

And Larok, in turn, talked about what it was like for them. It was a perspective that had been entirely foreign to him at the time, and even now he found he kept learning more things about the class of people he had once considered beneath him. Larok had eventually brought him around to meet his friends, and Helix had slowly been exposed to a perspective that was far different from the one his parents always spoke of.

Anyone could be a noble, his parents had said. They just had to work hard enough and find something a new House could be founded around.

Helix saw how hard Larok's friends worked, in every spare scrap of time they had. He saw how they achieved nothing. The materials they needed were too expensive; a single drop of the reagent they needed took weeks for them to earn. They could have done it in a week, with funding from a noble house, but then they would be relegated to a sub-branch of that house, and would be no better off than before.

And slowly, he'd changed his mind.

His brother had been the catalyst, certainly, but he was fighting with the Elyran rebels for his own reasons, now.

That was what had led him here. Larok stood by his side, a sheaf of papers folded under his arm. Talking to the Adventurer's Guild had changed things for them dramatically — it put them into contact with J'rokksur, and the people in that village seemed almost proud of the way they broke apart the system's skills for their own ends.

Now that was a power they had, too. Some of the secrets J'rokksur had shared freely could easily have earned them a noble house in Elyra themselves.

"I'm sure your brother would be grateful," Larok said, smiling at him. "Pity I missed the opportunity to meet him."

"You'll get the chance soon, I bet," Helix said with a laugh. "I've heard a bit about what they've been getting up to. They figured out a way to interfere with things from inside the bonus room."

"What, really?" Larok raised a brow. "That sounds... dangerous."

"He's found a good team." A good family, Helix thought to himself. He'd strive to be the same to his brother, once he got the chance.

"Are you just ignoring us?" a voice demanded, and Helix rolled his eyes. "Leave. Now. Noble or not, you are trespassing on House Herastul grounds."

"We were having a conversation," Helix said. He conjured a fireball in his hands, letting a wave of heat wash over them all; it was strong enough that even the enforcer on the opposite side of the garden flinched, through all the protective magics he wore on his armor.

Helix took a moment to feel bad for the man. He was only doing his job.

He was in their way, though.

"And you can do that outside," the guard insisted, sounding considerably more nervous.

Helix pretended to consider it for a moment. The fireball hung in the air, the heat from it visibly wilting the plants surrounding them. It was a direct interaction between fire and plant aspects of mana — non-magical plants would not have been nearly as affected — but the enforcer glanced back and forth between Helix and the plants, clearly noticing the effect he had.

"I gotta say," Larok said, sounding amused. "This is a lot more fun when I'm on the other side of it."

Helix grinned and elbowed his friend. "I don't think you're supposed to be encouraging me."

"I'm not, I'm not," Larok said. "I'd stop you if I thought you were abusing your power."

"Am I abusing my power?"

Larok's eyes sharpened as he looked at the guard, and Helix abruptly focused. The guard had abruptly stopped radiating fear, like it had been cut off by something — Helix recognized the working on his helmet, the glimmer of runes etched into the metal.

Wisfield.

They were making progress with the emotional suppression, it seemed. Of all the noble houses, they were the ones most likely to catch on to what they were doing — and the hardest one to break into.

If they wanted to steal House secrets, they needed to start here, with the Principle of House Herastul. They were Elyra's spies, able to slide themselves out of perception like the Guildmaster herself did — though their methods were assuredly different. By the Guildmaster's own word, Herastul spies were far worse than she was.

But that didn't matter when Helix had no hope of spotting either of them. It was the reason for the fireball being as large as it was — Herastul grounds were hidden from the rest of the city, and the heat would spur anyone hiding to act.

As it did now. Someone triggered the enchantment on the guard's helmet, after all.

Fortunately, it wasn't impossible to fight someone you couldn't see.

Larok and Helix both focused on the guard, as if they thought he was the only threat around. Helix pulled a hand down, compressing the enormous fireball hovering above his head into a bright spark of light in his hand, and then sent it flying forward; there was a flash as it struck the enchantment on the guard's sword and all that energy was converted into pure light, impossibly and blindingly bright.

It was a calculated move. Helix knew the spell would do nothing against the standard setup the guards carried, but it would blind anyone that happened to be looking in that direction.

Larok had closed his eyes in preparation for the flash, but he didn't need to open his eyes to throw the sheaf of papers in his arm up into the air. A gust of wind from Helix scattered the tax forms all over the garden, every individual piece fluttering to the ground in a poor imitation of snowfall.

"[Know Your Paperwork]," Larok said, and Helix laughed.

"You don't have to say your skills out loud, you know."

"It's cooler."

"Not when you're talking about paperwork!"

"Shut up," Larok grumbled, but in the same motion he pointed, and Helix reacted instantly; a flash of mana gathered into a runic circle that blasted out a powerful jet of water. It slammed into something invisible, and there was a cry of pain. A twist of his hand made the water-aspect mana dissipate before it could saturate the still-falling paper.

"One," Helix said.

"They know we're onto them, now," Larok commented. Helix laughed.

"Doesn't mean they can stop us, does it?"

Another spell sent the remaining pieces of paper swirling around the garden in a wide circle; the guard stumbled out of the way, anticipating a trick, but Helix slammed the base of his fist into the base of his helmet right as he moved. He cracked his neck, tossing the dagger he held to the side.

He wasn't his brother. Fighting with a dagger felt like a small tribute to Vex, but it wasn't really what he preferred.

"There," Larok said, and this time Helix struck out with a different spell entirely; threads of mana burst out of his fingers, spooling towards the spot Larok had indicated. The Herastul spy tried to step out of the way, but threads were far harder to dodge than a single jet of water; they caught around the spy anyway, and Helix's expression changed to something a little more grim.

A simple [Aspect Realignment], and the threads of mana changed to lightning.

"Two." Helix ignored the scream, his eyes flicking back towards the guard, who had gotten up again and was approaching with an unsteady sword. He stepped forward, striking into the center of the armor with both his hands; mana coursed down his hands and pulsed into the armor, slamming it inward.

"One more?" Larok said.

Helix inclined his head towards the entrance to the garden, where he'd left a number of small runic circles embedded in the ground. Spikes of earth erupted from the ground a second afterwards, cutting off a strangled cry.

"Three," Helix said. Larok shivered a bit.

"You can be pretty scary."

"Thanks, I try." Helix remained tense, his eyes looking around the garden. One guard and three handlers; it matched the reports they had, but this still all felt a little too easy. Herastul wasn't exactly a combat house, but they should have been better than this. It had taken one blow each...

Granted, every one of his spells were loaded with more than enough mana to take out most tanks, and if they were low on health from one blow, they would be smart enough to stay down.

"Your family doesn't make you immune to consequences, Ashion."

The words wisped by an ear, and Helix reacted quickly; fire burst from his body in a sphere, powerful enough to roast anyone standing nearby. He had to cancel the spell just as quickly when Larok stumbled, pushed into him.

And then the rest of House Herastul unveiled themselves. There were a dozen of them, standing in a circle around the pair, and one member of Wisfield.

That explained a lot. Wisfield's ability to keep them all connected mentally would let them coordinate perfectly.

"Why don't we try this again?"

The head of House Herastul was an old orc, but there was no humor in his smile. "What are you doing here, Ashion? With one of my clerks, no less?"

Helix sighed dramatically.

It was a good thing they were just the distraction.